Bristol’s visitor economy was given a major boost today with the opening of the £7.2m Being Brunel museum – complete with a giant head of the famous engineer which visitors can walk inside to ‘see’ the workings of his mind.
The museum, alongside Brunel’s ground-breaking SS Great Britain on Harbourside, is expected to bring in thousands of additional visitors and an extra £1m to Bristol’s economy each year.
Conceived and developed by the SS Great Britain Trust, and incorporating the hi-tech as well as the traditional – it is the world’s only museum dedicated to the engineering genius – and adopted son of Bristol – who helped define the great age of Victorian engineering and helped shape the modern world.
SS Great Britain Trust director Matthew Tanner said: “The opening of Being Brunel is another major milestone for this Trust. Brunel’s SS Great Britain saw a record year in 2017 and welcomed more than 205,000 visitors. Being Brunel extends the breadth and depth of the visitor experience yet further, giving people the chance to discover new things about Brunel and his extraordinary life and legacy.”
The attraction features six galleries setting out some 150 of Brunel’s personal artefacts – many never seen in public before – to provide an unprecedented insight into his life, family, interests and creative mind.
The giant head – reaching from the floor to the ceiling of the main gallery – dominates the museum. Visitors can enter Brunel’s head to view films and images on the inside.
Bristol’s tourism economy is worth more than £1.3bn and supports more than nearly 29,000 jobs and Being Brunel – which has been more than five years in the planning – has been widely anticipated by city tourist chiefs as well as the national organisations tasked with bringing more visitors to the UK.
It has already been placed among the Top 10 new attractions opening across the UK this year.
Around a fifth of visitors to the SS Great Britain are overseas tourists. The attraction supports around 180 jobs and contributes in the region of £9m to the local economy a year – a figure expected to rise this year with the opening of Being Brunel.
Mayor of Bristol Marvin Rees said: “Our cultural capital is a key element of Bristol’s appeal as a destination for visitors, job seekers and investors.
“I welcome the launch of Being Brunel and the contribution the new visitor attraction will make to the city’s tourism sector. Our city’s museums play an invaluable role in keeping our collective story alive and act as tools for education and exploring our own identity.”
Visit Britain chief executive Sally Balcombe added: “Britain’s heritage is a major draw for international visitors, with Brunel’s SS Great Britain already an iconic attraction. The addition of a new museum celebrating one of the country’s greatest ever engineers will continue to put Bristol on the map globally, be a real boost for British tourism and, by driving more visitors to the region, a boost for the local economy.”
Being Brunel brings together for the first time the world’s most significant collection on Brunel, allows visitors to discover more about the man - from his ocean liners like the SS Great Britain, which transformed the way we travel, to the famous Clifton Suspension Bridge.
The museum is based in the original and fully restored Dock Office in the historic Great Western Dockyard, where Brunel designed and built the SS Great Britain, and a new building alongside it.
The building was constructed by Beard working with Bristol architects Alec French Architects and has been designed to reflect the façade of original buildings that would have flanked the ship as she was constructed in her dry dock in 1840.
Beard, which is headquartered in Swindon and has an office in Bristol, built a steel-frame exhibition hall containing multiple gallery spaces and a mezzanine level, as well as a cafe. It connects to the historic Grade II* listed dock office via a first-floor bridge.
The overall design aims to evoke the atmosphere of the Great Exhibition of 1851 – which was a celebration of Victorian wonder and invention and featured Brunel on its design committee.
Visitors to Being Brunel step into a recreation of the drawing office where Brunel and his team worked on final designs for the SS Great Britain. Brunel’s office has been reconstructed based on a watercolour painted by his niece and creates a fully immersive encounter with his environment – from its sounds and scents through to the colour of the paint based on evidence found in his original office.
The museum enables visitors to discover the man behind the extraordinary engineering talent, from his unique relationship with his father Marc – also an engineer – his entrepreneurial acumen and design skill through to his love for the arts and drama.
They can even recreate the famous photo of Brunel by taking a selfie in front of a replica of the famous Great Eastern chains – donning a top hat while posing.
Interactive exhibits include a shaking 1830s broad-gauge railway carriage where ‘passengers’ will be able to compare their drawing skills to Brunel’s on tablets. He apparently could draw a perfect circle freehand and judged the comfort of the fledgling railway lines of the day by attempting to do so while traveling. He promised a smoother journey on the Great Western Railway, which he had just been appointed to as chief engineer.
While inside Brunel’s head, visitors will experience a multi-sensory cinematic experience where they will observe some of the extraordinary moments from his life as if they were seeing it through his eyes.
To display Brunel’s drawings and other items, more than 100 bespoke museum cabinets have been made by Yorkshire-based contractors Workhaus Projects to house original sketches and other artefacts.
Isambard Kingdom Brunel first visited Bristol in 1828 and later engineered some of the city’s most iconic structures, including the first Temple Meads railway station and the Clifton Suspension Bridge. The SS Great Britain is already rated as one of the UK’s top 10 museums by the public on TripAdvisor and the number one visitor attraction in Bristol.
The Being Brunel Corporate Club has supported the development of the museum, particularly Arthur J Gallagher Insurance Brokers, BAE Systems, The Bristol Port Company, Hollandia UK, Renishaw, SMC Global, Stannah, Wapping Wharf and Womble Bond Dickinson.
