Exclusive tour of Wiltshire’s new £65m innovation centre

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Wiltshire Science and Innovation Park plays host to an enormous new £65m, 355,000 sq ft facility named The Hawking Building, now home to over 300,000 items from the Science Museum Group's national collection alongside a range of business opportunities. Director Matt Moore explains the important role the facility can play for South West science and innovation firms in the future.

Transcript

00:00So, my name's Matt Moore, I'm the Director of the Science and

00:29Innovation Park at the Science Museum Group. So, this facility, the Hawking Building, which

00:35we're standing in now, is the Science Museum Group's major storage building, where we look

00:41after around 300,000 objects from the Science Museum Group collection. Yeah, it's an interesting

00:47challenge to move 300,000 differently sized objects. We've got everything from very long

00:52boats, eight metre rowing boats, to very large buses, some of which you can see behind us.

00:58But also thousands and thousands of very small, fragile objects as well. So, the process

01:03of moving is complex, difficult, requires a lot of people, and particularly bringing

01:08them all the way from West Kensington in London down to this site was a major, major event

01:14and it's taken a few years to do. It is, as you've mentioned, still a work in progress.

01:19We still have more objects to move from around our sites into this building, but it's been

01:23hugely successful and people are now loving and enjoying the collection that they can

01:27see displayed here properly. So, in October last year, we started the process of bringing

01:34the public onto this site for the first time and they got to experience this new open building.

01:40We brought in researchers and tour groups and schools to trial how visitors might use

01:45this space. And from March this year, we start that programme again and I'm really pleased

01:49to say that we're completely sold out in our first tranche of tickets and the new tickets

01:54go on sale in July. But we have a series of different experiences for people. So, we have

01:59the opportunity for people who are doing research into an object or into family history to come

02:03and actually deep dive into one of the objects in the collection. But we also have guided

02:08tours for those that want just a general view of what we do here and what we store here.

02:12And then more importantly, and most importantly, is our schools programme about bringing key

02:17stage 2 children to the site to engage with the collection and really get inspired to

02:21become the scientists of the future.

02:24What I'm really fascinated about with these objects is they also connect to the wider

02:28site. So, we can see in the background behind me one of the blue buses. That's called the

02:32Guy Arab bus. It worked in Swindon in the 1940s and it was quite an interesting build

02:37that bus. It responded to the lack of materials in the wartime and it created this unusual

02:43bus built out of wood, particularly heavy for its time. So, very different to the buses

02:48of the time. But it responded to a demand, a materials demand within society. And we're

02:56now seeing other innovators, bus companies, using our site to actually prototype new buses

03:02and transport systems in order to build the buses of the future. So, there's a real direct

03:07link between that bus and what we do on the wider site. So, it's fascinating to see those

03:11types of objects in the collection. But vehicles aren't the only thing we look after. We also

03:16have really unusual things, like a rubber duck that was used to model an asteroid that

03:21was moving through space. And the shape of the rubber duck coincided with the shape of

03:26the asteroid. So, scientists used that to model where they might land a probe.

03:32So, this is an example of the breadth of our collection. And it's got a really strong

03:37South West link. This is a thespian robot called Robo Thespian that was developed by

03:42a company called Engineered Arts in Truro. And it's a robot that is used to simulate

03:49human engagement. And it actually officiated at weddings. It has facial recognition abilities.

03:57It can waggle its fingers and blink its eyelids. But it can recite all sorts of different stories.

04:03And it's a fascinating example of robotics and how robotics is progressing. And it's part of

04:07our wider collection of robot materials in our collection that dates back to the very

04:13dawn of robotics. So, we're really lucky here. We've got this huge facility in this new building.

04:18It's about 27,000 square meters of collection storage. But outside the walls of this building,

04:25there's 550 acres of land. And we try and work with STEM innovators and engineers and inventors

04:31to use some of our site to prototype new projects. So, for example, we have a company

04:39called CMAQ Energy who are building a prototype wind turbine using some of our land to test how

04:44that might work. We have a company called Riven who are building new experimental

04:49atmospheric gas generation plant on site. So, we're trying to work with people in the low

04:54carbon technology industry to use the amazing resource that we've got here to become the new

05:00technologies of the future. And we tie up with universities and we tie up with businesses to

05:04try and do that and to really make the most of our land and particularly how it might

05:08then link back to our collection that we have stored behind me as you can see.

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