It isn’t safe to be an old building in Walsall these days…

I was contacted late on Tuesday afternoon by BBC journo Ben Sidwell, who was compiling a report for local news TV magazine show ‘Midlands Today’, and was enquiring if he could use one of my images of the BOAK Ravenscraig building in Walsall, taken a week before it was tragically lost to a huge fire.

Of course, I agreed. It was very gracious of Ben to ask, in marked contrast to the contact I’ve had with many other journalists. The report he compiled was shown tonight (Wednesday, 1st August 2012). I’ve snaffled it out of Facebook and stuck it on YouTube for posterity.

I’m not sure showing the hotel was a good idea, to be honest, but on the whole, an excellent and very thought-provoking report.

For those waiting news of the point I raised on Sunday, I’m hoping to roll some ideas up into a post at the weekend. I want to accommodate all the strands out disparate communities use – Flickr, Panoramio, Forums, photo bucket, blogs, YouTube etc. so we can build an archive with minimal rehashing of existing work. To this end I’m looking at a couple of geolocated information mashups. Please stay tuned – I’ve not forgotten and continue to think carefully on the matter.

In the meantime, you could do worse than read Stuart Williams’ latest polemic on the subject. He makes some very fine points. I want this project to be as open as possible and driven, not by me, but by you lot.

This is our collective heritage. We deserve to record it together.