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Staff Swap Suits for Shorts and Surf Boards

23 August 2011

This morning, five staff from the Museum swapped their work suits and spanners for shorts and surf boards and headed to the beach, in land-locked Coventry.

But for Chief Executive Gary Hall and his colleagues this wasn’t just any excuse for a day at the beach. The team of staff at the museum are currently putting together a major new exhibition entitled Wheels & Waves. The exhibition will bring together a range of vehicles used by British surfers, including vintage VW camper vans and iconic beach buggies.

As Gary explained;
“We’re immersed in surf culture at the moment as we prepare for our new exhibition, Wheels and Waves.  We’d love to visit the rolling waves and sandy beaches in Hawaii or Cornwall as part of our research but as we are located as far away from the sea as possible this just isn’t practical. So, we're waxing our boards, slapping on the sun cream and heading to the urban beach that’s landed in Coventry to feel the wind in our hair and sand between our toes. The museum staff are taking bets on how long I’ll last on the surfing machine!”

Wheels & Waves, a new exhibition of vehicles used by British surfers from the 1950s to the present, opens here at Coventry Transport Museum on Thursday 20 October and runs until March 2012.  A range of vehicles will be displayed on beach-themed sets, along with an array of surf art and memorabilia.

Admission to this special exhibition is free of charge.

The Coventry Beach is at Shelton Square, Coventry, until Thursday 25 September.

Photographs by Haydn Bailey.
With thanks to Phil Walters at MICMA for the loan of the Dodge PB Camper.

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