1.  BACKGROUND

  In making our submission to the Select Committee, we are focusing our comments on Thinktank, Birmingham's Science Museum, since we are the creators and original funders of this Millennial project.

  Since opening in 2001, Thinktank has attracted over a million visitors. Birmingham City Council was the prime mover in establishing the museum in the brand new and purpose-built Millennium Point. The project has been developed since its initiation in accordance with the original design and project purpose established in partnership with the Millennium Commission. Birmingham City Council is a key funder of Thinktank.

2.  OUR POSITION

  We welcome this timely Select Committee on the funding of science centres and hope our submission will serve three purposes:

(a)  An affirmation that, in our view, science centres in general, including Thinktank in particular, are vital to our nation's future.

(b)  A request that the Government consider the merits of the services and learning opportunity that Thinktank and such science centres offer and supports their further development.

(c)  A suggestion that a national strategy should be formulated that will secure a long-term future for science centres in the UK so as to integrate them in the national learning infrastructure as they have been in Wales and Scotland.

3.  EVALUATION

  What science centres do is measurable. Many science centres routinely evaluate the impact of initiatives, exhibitions and of new investment. Sometimes this will happen for the commercial opportunity that change brings, more often it is to ensure the cultural value of new investment. Thinktank leads the field in this area of expertise.

4.  ENTITLEMENT

  Many teachers in the West Midlands share the belief that science learning should be an entitlement. While Health and Safety guidelines have made it increasingly difficult to engage children with science experimentation, science centres like Thinktank offer this as stock in trade and undertake now what the school classroom cannot. There was an erroneous perception when science centres were first delivered that they were mere visitor attractions with no more to offer than entertainment centres. Now, the breadth and quality of science centres is such that any such view is no longer tenable. In the Midlands alone, from the restoration of Green's Windmill in 1986 to the installation of Thinktank's Planetarium in 2006, the last two decades have seen the wholesale enrichment of the learning landscape with exhibits and experiences that are so utterly different from funfairs and arcades that schools, colleges and universities have overwhelmingly partnered with science centres.

5.  RESPONSIVENESS

  Science centres like Thinktank not only respond closely to what the public want, but demonstrate an understanding of user needs and move swiftly to meet them. Thinktank's new Planetarium was identified as a public enthusiasm during audience research in the last four years, was installed within 18 months of this discovery, has now hosted 60,000 visitors in its first year of operation and opened coincidentally with the closure (for purely commercial reasons and in spite of protest from learning and cultural groups) of its eponymous predecessor in London.

6.  REGIONAL AND SOCIAL IMPACT

  Science centres operate very closely to their regional and local contexts. Many are highly socially inclusive and respond to local needs and problems, contributing local solutions to issues otherwise unattended to. Several of the Millennium projects have a high level of engagement with housing and regeneration schemes and are currently engaged with economic development in urban contexts. Thinktank's officers are currently making a significant contribution to the advancement of proposals for the regeneration and development of Birmingham's "Eastside" through the development of schemes that will complement and enhance city's landscape, and notably its intended new City Park as well as Thinktank itself.

7.  IN CONCLUSION

  Birmingham City Council and the regional parliaments of Wales and Scotland have led the nation in generating and sustaining science centres up to this point. The benefits are considerable and measurable. However, a national strategy would contribute much to the public's use of them and to a general engagement with science, to the point where new careers and livelihoods founded on science and technology would ensue. We therefore urge the Government to support this relevant, empowering and utterly worthwhile initiative.

June 2007