Museum plans for Birmingham’s Municipal Bank and Great Barr Hall

Two of Birmingham’s most ‘at risk’ landmark buildings are set to be saved as a brand new museum, which could become a major tourist attraction.

Birmingham Post writes:
The Birmingham Municipal Bank, in Broad Street, is set to be transformed into a Museum of World Religions, which will bring the city’s diverse faiths together under one roof.

Also earmarked for restoration is the stately Great Barr Hall, which has been derelict for the last 30 years.

This would be a place of contemplation and host religious arts and music festivals. If developed, the visitor attraction would stand as a Western equivalent of the Museum of World Religions in Taipei.

Birmingham, with its diverse range of faiths, is seen as an ideal location for the museum and a committee of faith leaders, academics and experts was set up in 2010 to develop the idea.

Now, they have earmarked the two historic buildings as the best places to develop their proposals and negotiations with the buildings’ owners, architects and investors have started.

Birmingham City Council, which owns the Municipal Bank, told the Post it was sympathetic to the museum proposal if it could be developed into a workable plan.

In its vision statement, the committee said Birmingham had a rich history as a forward-thinking city which welcomed people of all faiths from the early non-conformist Christian groups such as Baptists, Methodists and Quakers and the Jewish communities in the 18th century through to the Muslim, Sikh and Hindu communities as well as black Christian Churches which arrived in the 20th century.

More recently, there has been wide inter-faith co-operation on areas like religious education and the creation of a city faith map and these have led directly to the Museum of World Religions project…

Earlier this year, a planning application was submitted to Walsall Council for the conversion of the 18th century mansion, once home to the Scott Family, into a leisure spa and hotel complex, with proposals for 57 homes in the surrounding grounds. But this has not yet been approved.

Birmingham post article

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