Petition to the DCMS Minister

[timtype]

Rob Firth has passed on information about a cutting from the London
Review of Books dated June 19th which contains a petition asking Andy
Burnham, Sec of State at the Dept for Culture, Media and Sport, to
prevent the "proposed move into storage of the Type Archive from its
present home at the Type Museum in Lambeth to aircraft hangers [sic]
at Wroughton in Wiltshire and an appeal to increase the DCMS annual
grant to the Type Museum." and apparently this has a Type Museum
copyright mark on it.

Did anyone else see this? Can anyone send us the full text? This would
appear to be the first public statement that the Type Museum Trustees
have made since the time of the closure to the public two years ago.

Does this represent growing support for the reopening of the Type
Museum, or just last minute resistance to the rumoured imminent
removal of the Type Museum to the NMSI's site at Wroughton, that we
feared then?

Does calling the Museum's collections 'the Type Archive' represent
some concluded decision? This is an entirely new description of the
Type Museum's collections - which have hitherto always been described
in terms of its mission to maintain a working Type production Museum
for the education of future generations of communicators. Does this
mean that the Science Museum is taking over? Does the notion of Type
Archive include all the historic presses and the production
technologies which have been collected. Which cover all the stages in
hand and machine founding; hot-metal and wood type production; film
and photosetting and the early forms of digital type production or -
perish the thought - merely the patterns that these living processes
used.

Colleges are still clamouring to know when and how their students of
communication and the graphic arts can make use of the Type Museum
collections again. No one has public argued that these collections are
anything less than an invaluable world class treasure. Who is
resisting the reopening of the Type Museum and with what arguments?

[TypeMuseumSociety]

More Postcards! "Please help keep the Type Museum alive – and in
Lambeth"

In an article in the May 2008 edition of Spark, the newspaper of the
Stockwell Park Conservation Area (which is adjacent to the Type
Museum) Sue Shaw the Museum's founder and first Director comments on
p3 (downloadable from http://www.stockwellpark.com/pdf/spark-2008-05.pdf
)

"The Science Museum requested we close, temporarily, to the public two
years ago. We have remained open for business, manufacturing unique
'matrix' fonts for Europe and the US. They now wish to move everything
to their aircraft hangar storage in Wiltshire, ie to a grave. We need
your help to prevent this. Irreplaceable skills will be lost, and a
wonderful educational resource.appeals for suport."

Referring to ... "a postcard enclosed in this issue of Spark. Please
send it to the Department of Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS). To do
more, write a letter to your MP and local councillor, copied to the
DCMS. If you have ideas, email me, sue...@typemuseum.org. Do ask for
more postcards. ...

Please give us your support. Thank you.
Sue Shaw"