End of Museum and Art Gallery Consultation

The public are thanked for sending in their ideas and suggestions for finding a new home for Swindon’s celebrated Museum and Art Collections.

The Swindon Museum and Art Gallery Trust thanks the public for all of their energy and ideas to help find a new home for the town’s incredible museum and art collections and encourages them to keep making their thoughts heard.

At the beginning of August, The Trust asked the people of Swindon to get in touch to offer up their suggestions for how the town’s collections could be re-homed to make greater use of them for the next generation of Swindonians. All of the ideas were then passed on to Swindon Borough Council, who are carrying out an Options Appraisal for the project.

“I was amazed to see how quickly people took up the challenge to help find a new home for Swindon’s collections. Social media was buzzing with ideas and debate, and we’ve been inundated with people contacting us to offer their thoughts.” Trust Director Dr Rod Hebden said, “We’ve ended up with a much longer list of options than we started with, as well as some very strong and well considered arguments for and against many of the options which we already knew about. There are a lot of opinions about what would be best, and there is certainly no consensus for any individual solution.”

The Options Appraisal is being carried out by Swindon Borough Council officers and will be finalised during September. After the assessments are complete, it will be up to Swindon Borough Council elected members to use that information to inform a decision on the future for the Museum and Art Gallery should be taken forward.

Peter Troughton, interim Chair of Swindon Museum and Art Gallery Trust, said “I’ve been very impressed by the Council’s willingness to consider all options which the public have raised and to assess them all fairly and without bias. It will be up to the Council to make the final decision, but it is encouraging to see that they will be doing so with a balanced view of the opportunities and challenges that all of the options present.”

Over the autumn, Swindon Borough Council will consider the findings of the Options Appraisal, as part their work around the future of the Museum and Art Gallery which will be debated by SBC Cabinet.