Museum assembles extension project team
The University of Manchester is recruiting a project manager and cost consultant to lead the £10m Courtyard Project at Manchester Museum, a new exhibition space partly funded by the Government.
The university brief for the £250,000 contract for project management describes the Courtyard Project as seeking “to transform Manchester Museum’s reach to increased and diversified audiences, and make a pivotal contribution to Manchester city-region’s economic, social and cultural renaissance at the heart of the emerging Northern Powerhouse.”
The university aims to “create the North of England’s leading venue for temporary exhibitions on human cultures and the natural world; one which is free of charge for all. Develop the region’s only large-scale gallery of South Asian history and culture; the largest British Museum Partnership Gallery in the UK. Attract and welcome visitors with a new, street-facing entrance and greatly improved facilities. Deliver a step-change in public engagement, volunteering, learning programmes and civic participation, driven by a new ethos of Manchester Museum as a ‘museum for life’.”
The project is to be funded via three sources:
- Treasury (Department for Culture, Media & Sport) £5m towards the South Asian Gallery
- Heritage Lottery Fund £4.6m to be secured, a Stage 1 HLF application has been made
- Manchester Museum / fundraising of an undisclosed amount— the remainder from Museum endowments, internal contributions and fundraising activities
Last August, specialist gallery architect ZMMA was appointed to design the new attraction.
The project management and cost consultancy contract is estimated to start in July 2016 and finish at the end of 2020.
