Plans in motion for new Birmingham museum

The search is underway for an architect to help deliver a new museum for Birmingham.

The £70,000 feasibility study contract contract is being put up for tender by Birmingham Museums Trust, which is developing the museum with the support of Birmingham council and the Science Museum Group.

The contract notice says a masterplanner is required to deliver a feasibility study that researches and develops site options, function and business model for the museum.

The chosen practice will develop a brief for the project, including identifying potential locations for new-build and evaluating them against the option of repurposing an existing site.

In the notice, Birmingham Museums Trust said: “The vision is emerging from a series of creative conversations among Birmingham Museums Trust’s senior leadership team, with some external input, to consider what a genuinely radical, audience-centred mass participation city museum project for Birmingham might look like.

“This project started as a plan to create a new museum of science and industry for Birmingham. There are numerous practical reasons that led to this. The current building housing Thinktank is costly to run and restrictive, and its lease will expire in 2029.

“Its site is a target for redevelopment as HS2 increases land values.

“The City Plan proposes to reorientate around culture and there is political will on the council to engage with the city’s industrial past, present and future. Moreover, the Science Museum Group is keen to support scienceoriented development in the region.

“But opportunities to create a new museum from scratch are rare and invite deeper reflection as to what might be possible. And, to be frank, the world that made museums of science and industry, and the world that made Thinktank, are now worlds of the past. The wider context described above gives added impetus to consider a more radical vision, centred on the people of Birmingham, echoing the principles of Our Future City Plan.

“We propose that this emerging vision for a new museum encompasses the whole of BMT’s traditional subject coverage – science, industry, natural history, the city of Birmingham, world cultures, archaeology, fine art, the decorative arts.”

Requests to tender must be submitted by September 13.