The Guild of Location Managers

West Midlands Film Friendly Museums

The West Midlands has a diverse collection of Film Friendly museums, galleries, country houses, castles and parklands, all of which are adaptable and suitable for a range of different filming requirements.

Recreated historic townscapes such as Blists Hill Victorian Town and the Black Country Living Museum, provide accurate period internal and external locations for homes, workplaces, shops, pubs, places of worship, school rooms, fun fairs and street scenes from the Victorian, Edwardian and interwar periods. Hinting at the West Midlands’ Industrial Heritage many of the museums are set in former factories and reflect the trades of the region such as the ceramics industry at Gladstone and its sister museums in Stoke or the Museum of the Jewellery Quarter in Birmingham.

The Ironbridge Gorge Museums offer a stunning selection of backdrops and industrial locations, including Broseley Pipeworks, a preserved former Clay Tobacco Pipe factory, Coalport China Museum, with its wonderful Bottle Kilns, Jackfield Tile Museum and Blists Hill Victorian Town, with its many working exhibits, such as the foundry and the iron rolling-mill. Other locations include elegant Georgian houses, rustic Victorian workers’ cottages, period shops, historic woodlands and tracks and, naturally, the world’s first cast iron bridge.

For something more contemporary the Wolverhampton Art Gallery, The Herbert Art Gallery and Museum Coventry and Thinktank Birmingham offer a fine selection of modern interiors, suitable to portray a range of state of the art commercial interiors such as offices, studios, airport lounges and galleries. The region has castles and country houses in a range of historic architectural styles, including Medieval Warwick Castle, Jacobean Aston Hall and Georgian Weston Park. All the venues welcome film crews and understand the needs of location managers, many are used on a regular basis such as Blists Hill Victorian Town, where Victorian Pharmacy was recently filmed and the Black Country Living Museum, where scenes were shot for Toast.