Birmingham Museums Trust has announced that groups will be offered flexible visits across nine venues including Aston Hall, Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery and Weoley Castle Ruins.
The new bespoke packages, which groups can design according to their requirements and budgets, means that group travel organisers will have the option to add guided tours, refreshments, lunches and guidebooks onto visit-only options.
Lucy Elvin, business development associate at Birmingham Museums, explained that the aim was to make the customer experience and group booking offer as flexible as possible.
She said: “A group might be visiting us as part of a wider itinerary and might not need refreshments and lunches; household members within a group visit might not need multiple guidebooks. By taking this approach and by offering excellent add-on options we can help each group plan and create a tailor-made package that’s perfect for them.”
Group visits start from £7 per person at Blakesley Hall, an Elizabethan house and gardens, which includes features such as the uneven Long Gallery, lavish decorative framing and fine painted cloths.
Other venues include Soho House, pictured above – a restored Georgian home of the industrialist Matthew Boulton – and the Museum of The Jewellery Quarter which is built around the preserved jewellery workshop of manufacturing firm Smith & Pepper who ceased trading in 1981. Today this ‘time capsule’ offers a glimpse into working life in Birmingham’s renowned jewellery and metalworking heritage.
Both Soho House and the Museum of the Jewellery Quarter are open exclusively for guided tour group visits.
Birmingham Museums Trust is an independent charity which manages the city’s museum collection and venues on behalf of Birmingham City Council. Attracting more than one million visits a year, its portfolio consists of Aston Hall, Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, Blakesley Hall, Museum Collection Centre, Museum of the Jewellery Quarter, Sarehole Mill, Soho House, Thinktank and Weoley Castle.
For more details on groups visits email groups@birminghammuseums.org.uk or call 0121 348 8001.
