Looking Round the First Floor of the Civic Offices and Media articles

 Although Swindon Museum and Art Gallery is currently closed, work is about to begin to convert the first floor of the Civic Offices in Euclid Street into a new museum and gallery. The Civic Offices were built in 1937-39 in the Moderne style, a variant of Art Deco which features smooth surfaces, curved corners and horizontal lines. The building was Grade II listed in 2020, and certainly has a feeling of ambition and elegance about it; one gets the feeling that Swindon had ambition at the time this building was commissioned.

Three members of the Friends were very pleased to be invited to have a look round the first floor before work begins. We were met by Frances Yeo, Swindon Museums Manager and Cabinet Member for Culture, Arts and Heritage, Marina Strinkovsky and received the following presentation:

The three museums used to function separately, since 2020, they have worked under one team with Frances Yeo in overall charge.

Even made as large as it can be on the screen, it's hard to see the plan. Visitors will walk up the stairs, or use the lift if they want to do so, and access the museum and art gallery ahead of them. The lower part of the picture shows rooms which will be galleries, a room for school parties and a library/study room whereas the rooms in the top part of the diagram will be storage areas. There's 40% more space in this building than at Apsley House and room for more items to be stored on site.

So what will be in the museum:

Plus

I took a few photos, but really there are just large rooms and lots of small rooms with stud walls at the moment.

Above Frances Yeo and Cllr Strinkovsky posing for the camera, and below one of the impressively large rooms on the first floor..

On the way down from being shown around, we posed for a photo on the stairs:

Before we left we were shown some of the results of the rebranding exercise, a new logo, statements and name. We'll let you know more soon...

Today came the latest press release with a later opening date than we had anticipated:

Swindon councillor gives update on museum and art space - BBC News 

which wasn't something that had been shared, so why this figure of 2 years was plucked out of the air I don't understand. We have been assured it will open much sooner than that.

This piece appeared in the Swindon Adver today: Work finally begins on new Swindon museum and gallery | Swindon Advertiser

And what's more the Civic Offices are now being considered as the permanent home for Swindon Museum and Art Gallery: Swindon council officers could be long-term home of museum and gallery | Swindon Advertiser