Ideas for an Exciting Basildon Museum Inspired by Vin Harrop

Vin Harrop has been the biggest inspiration in my local history author career (after this Arnold Wesker with his community play Beorhtel's Hill and Frances Clamp and also the Basildon Borough Heritage team). He welcomed me to The Basildon Heritage Project Team with his usual enthusiasm and warmth and although I was sort of going along with his campaign at the time he planted a seed that has stayed in my mind. This seed is the idea of a museum for Basildon.

Take a look at this newspaper article about Vin and The Arts Centre and then you might appreciate why this man is such an inspiration: -
https://www.echo-news.co.uk/news/16891794.the-rise-and-fall-of-basildons-groundbreaking-arts-centre/

My ideal museum would appeal to all ages and would be highly immersive, it would include virtual reality experiences where you could walk down Laindon High Road in the 1940's or 1950's, go into Parkinson' s for example and ask for something, it would be much like the fork handles scene in the Two Ronnies. You'd go and visit the plotlanders where they might be all gathered for a sing song "don't fence me in!"
You might go up to Langdon Hills as part of 'Basildon in the Second World War' experience and visit the army camp and the prisoner of war camp then go to The Barge Pub in Vange and have a pint with Elizabeth Goodson serving you, you might be surrounded by local soldiers from Vange army camp and Doughy Saunders might be leaning on the bar. Maybe you'd want to go back to the Locarno Ballroom when Mecca Dancing owned it or the Arts Centre.

I'd also have escape rooms, there could be 'Escape from the POW camp' or escape from your house and get to shelter before the Blitz as the German pilots are coming back from London following the Thames and will be targeting Pitsea.

My ideal location for this marvellous museum about Basildon would be in the Eastgate Shopping Centre as it has a very good footfall and it has its place in history as the biggest indoor shopping centre in Europe in the 1980's.

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Lisa Horner Writer & Artist

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