Vision for The Birmingham Project, Birmingham Museum Trust

Polly and writer and curator David Rooney facilitated a series of creative conversations in Spring 2021 with Birmingham Museums Trust’s senior leadership team, to consider what a genuinely radical, audience-centred mass-participation city museum project for Birmingham might look like.

Their resulting Vision to deliver a new ‘unique and innovative’ museum for Birmingham rethinks subject categories such as ‘science’ and ‘industry’ and is now being developed as feasibility study, backed by Birmingham City Council, the Science Museum Group and Birmingham Museums Trust.

According to the brief: ‘This is a rare and exciting opportunity to explore, interrogate, and respond to the vision, ethos, and overall approach for a unique and innovative new museum’. The Vision suggests innovative ways to rethink access to museum collections and potential options include either a flagship new build, a new build with a series of neighbourhood hubs or a web of buildings or installations across the city. It also explores the potential for a ‘bold, innovative and eye-catching temporary intervention’

 The Birmingham Project (working title) will replace Thinktank, the major science museum showcasing the history of local innovation and located inside the Grimshaw-designed Millennium Point.