Science Fictions

About

The National Collections Centre is currently home to 35,000 objects from the Science Museum Group Collection and Science Museum’s Library and Archive. In Spring 2019, a major construction project to create a new home for the Science Museum Group Collection at the National Collections Centre began.

The new facility will transform how the Science Museum Group manages, cares for and shares its internationally significant collection with the public. Over 300,000 objects will be transported from their current storage in west London to their new home in Wiltshire. By 2024, the site will house the majority of the Science Museum Group collection in a purpose-built collection management facility open to the public on a site that uniquely combines science, history and landscape.

Appointed in collaboration with the Science Museum Group, Bedwyr Williams will create a public artwork for the National Collections Centre in Wiltshire. Spanning a four-year period, Williams will create an artistic response to the extraordinary Science Museum Group Collection and its new, publicly accessible home at the National Collections Centre, due to be unveiled in 2024.

Community participation is at the core of this major art commission. Williams will collaborate with the local community to produce a significant piece of film and an accompanying book, titled Science Fictions, inspired by the Group’s internationally important collection and new home. The film is expected to premier at the National Collections Centre in 2024, when the newly built collection management facility will open for public tours, school and research visits.

Bedwyr Williams said: ‘I think, as a child, I had an inkling that a collection like this existed, but I never thought I’d have the opportunity to explore such an enormous, amazing thing. It’s a collection that for me at least sends me on wild flights of fancy imagining the histories of these objects from the banal to the extraordinary and the whimsical to the heart-breaking. Driving across an airfield in the middle of nowhere and getting a glimpse behind the scenes of a collection like this my first thought was I’d like to be sniffing around these objects with other people and their imaginations and memories. So for me sharing this experience in this way seems the only way to do it.’

Members of the public aged 18 or over with an interest in writing are invited to contribute to Science Fictions and have until 5 April 2021 to submit a brief online application [link to page] and suggest three items from the Science Museum Group Collection they wish to write about. Submissions from those living near to the National Collections Centre in Wiltshire are particularly welcome. Successful participants will receive behind-the-scenes access to the Science Museum Group Collection (including a visit the National Collections Centre once COVID-19 restrictions allow), have the opportunity to work closely with Williams and have their words included in the Science Fictions book and film. Members of the public interested in participating in Science Fictions can find out more by visiting the website link listed in the right hand menu of this page.