Tune in to Switched On

This year the Science Museum Group is celebrating the BBC's centenary through displays, exhibitions and events across three museum sites (National Science and Media Museum, Science Museum and Science and Industry Museum) on a programme called Broadcast 100. The National Science and Media Museum leads the celebrations with its dedicated exhibition, Switched On: 100 years of broadcast innovation open until January 2023.

The Switched On exhibition was developed in collaboration with the BBC to tell the most authentic and surprising stories in broadcast evolution over the last 100 years. To communicate these stories, we use a wide variety of interpretation methods including object displays, interactives, videos, images, commissioned films and soundscapes.

This exhibition would not have been possible without the BBC as a leading partner. The majority of the images and videos in the gallery come from the vast BBC Archive. There are some real gems to discover, from the earliest variety show television broadcasts to current programmes: Strictly Come Dancing and RuPaul's Drag Race.

The first step to developing an exhibition is nailing the 'big idea'. What is the main message and what themes should the exhibition explore? We worked closely with the BBC in the early stages of content development to shape stories. Once this has been done you can start to think about what visitors will see and experience. Curators delved into our collection of over 1,000 unique broadcasting objects to choose the best objects to display. This collection was donated by the BBC to the National Science and Media Museum 10 years ago to celebrate their 90th anniversary. The rich collection that includes pioneering microphone design, innovative colour camera technology and television props (Doctor Who's Daleks and puppet Muffin the Mule) made object selection a difficult feat - with so much choice, how can you whittle them down?

Working out what you can't have is one way of starting. Your most impressive objects might be too big to fit into your gallery space. One object, the iconic 2001 EMI television camera, didn't make the cut because of where we wanted to put it and what it was made of. There wasn't enough room to tell the full story in our gallery so we explored the possibility of putting the camera in the museum foyer. This was quickly rejected by our conservation team who wanted to protect the object for the future. The camera was one of the last to be used in regular broadcasting service on Eastenders and has a piece of paper listing the cast and crew of the last episode it filmed taped to the body. Paper is light sensitive, and the foyer has floor to ceiling windows, put the two together and the names will fade in the sunlight meaning it can't be enjoyed by future generations. The object was sadly dropped from the exhibition but the stories we had collected from BBC alumni of working with the camera were gathered and posted on a blog for everyone to enjoy wherever they are.

After weeks of content discussion, 40 objects were selected and the conservation team started checking their condition and completing any needed treatment. Work then began on how to display objects: do they need plinths, bespoke supports or suspension? What is the best way to show off the object and get visitors to engage with the content? One way is to replicate how it would have looked whilst in use.

We got the green light to suspend the BBC puppets and started measuring.

The grass base links to the associated footage of its first use by BBC News taking off from a farm in Cheshire in 2013.

As well as objects already in our museum collection, we seek additional objects as loans. Early on in development we secured a loan of the coveted Strictly Come Dancing Glitterball Trophy.

This stunning object deserves to be the centre of attention, so we staged it in a tower case to show it off from all angles and act as a draw into a story about dancing over the decades. Dancing has always been popular since the beginning of television in 1936 and the artform still dominates today with 7 million tuning in to watch Strictly every year.

There's much more to see, so why don't you pay the National Science and Media Museum a visit this year? The exhibition is free to enter and open until January 2023.

Click here to find out more about Broadcast 100.