Techniquest in Cardiff, the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum in Northern Ireland and Newcastle’s Discovery Museum have all benefited from ReDiscover awards.
In the first of four funding rounds, the Discovery Museum was awarded £554,250 and this will be split between four projects.
The displays around the 1894 ship, Turbinia, the museum’s largest and most popular exhibit, are to be completely refurbished and will include a huge plasma screen and a series of interactive exhibits demonstrating how turbines work.
Elsewhere, a new interactive display highlighting the three great pioneer Tyneside inventors and industrialists about which the museum receives the most enquiries – railway pioneers George and Robert Stephenson; George Swan, inventor of the first light bulb and Charles Pearson, renowned for his work on steam turbines – will be introduced.
The grant will also be used to create a range of learning resources.
The museum’s new entrance, which leads into the Turbinia Hall, opens to visitors in July, marking the completion of the structural redevelopment stage of the site’s £12.25m redevelopment.
At Holywood in Northern Ireland, the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum has been awarded £231,041. The museum will be using the grant for the development of its Flight Experience exhibition, a three-stage project involving the renewal, refurbishment and expansion of a display which opened in 1999.
In addition, new gallery space will include an air traffic control station, interactive aircraft parts and models and a flight simulator.
The award coincides with the museum’s 2003 Centenary of Flight celebrations.
Cardiff Bay’s Techniquest Science Discovery Centre received an award of £927,000 from ReDiscover, funding which will be channelled into phase two of the site’s Musiquest Project.
Musiquest is an initiative using music as a medium for exploring science and technology and the award will permit the development of 35 new exhibits, educational programmes and new partnership projects with external organisations.
The project, going under the working title of "Musical Encounters of a New Kind", is expected to get under way later this year and be completed in stages during the next three years.
The ReDiscover fund is a £33m joint venture between the Millennium Commission, the Wellcome Trust and the Wolfson Foundation and set up to help science museums and science centres "renew, replace, refresh or redevelop high quality science, education and technology exhibitions to keep up with advances in science and technology." Details: www.twmuseums.org.uk / www.magni.org.uk / www.techniquest.org
