Looking back to decisions made in March 2019

 Although I often don't manage to write all the blog posts I'd like to do, I think most of the time I get something written down. Looking for the talk we had on Michael Ayrton, given by his step grand daughter, Justine Hopkins, I found a post written at a time when Swindon Museum and Art Gallery in Apsley House was at a cross roads after failing to be given HLF funding to build a new Museum and Art Gallery beside the Wyvern Theatre. The decision at that time was to invest in Apsley House and continue to use it as a museum and art gallery.

Here's a link to the post: http://friendsofsmag.blogspot.com/2019/03/latest-plans-for-swindon-mag.html

In March of 2019, the council’s Cabinet agreed:

• 'to spend £400,000 on remedial works of the current building in Bath Road
• to spend £100,000 to take the collections ‘on tour’ to venues around Swindon
• To use £250,000 grant from the Local Enterprise Partnership to test the viability of a future project to create a combined new Wyvern Theatre, Museum & Art Gallery and ‘Civic quarter’. This quarter may be largely paid for by the sale or redevelopment of the Civic Offices on Euclid Street.'
  
  
  
  In February 2019, we had a talk by Heritage architect Michael Gray on the Wyvern Theatre. His fascinating talk was written up here. It's sometimes useful to look back to previous thinking and work out what has changed, especially at this time when there has been a proposal from the council not to reopen Apsley House, remove its collections and sell the building.