Contractor: Interpretation Design and Build – Wells & Mendip Museum

The museum is embarking on ‘Search & Learn,’ a project to make it more relevant to local communities and more appealing and useful to visitors. Amongst other features, the project will develop new interpretation schemes for the Foyer of the lecture room, Balch’s Study, and the Story of Wells galleries.

Submissions are invited for the Interpretation Design and Build elements of the project. The budget has been set (see below) and the timescale for interpretation design and build are currently estimated at June 2022 until September 2023.

You will need to be able to demonstrate that you have sufficient experience of delivering similar sized projects, sufficient capacity to deliver this project and that you can work to this timescale.

The interpretation proposal has been agreed by Wells & Mendip Museum and The National Lottery Heritage Fund and we are committed to the themes and concepts it contains. The appointed contractor will need to review these and develop them through to production and installation. Any modifications to the original concept will need to be agreed by W&MM and The National Lottery Heritage Fund based on user feedback/testing and/or technical requirements and without increases in costs. On request the current agreed concept interpretation proposal will be available to applicants from the Curator, contact details below.

Spaces and Themes:

The City galleries, comprising two rooms on the first floor, will provide compelling and coherent displays relating to the city from medieval to modern times that will contain artefacts, archives, images, and audio-visual content. The first room is to cover the medieval and post-medieval periods, and the adjacent second room the modern period, including the museum’s extensive collection of photographic images. The displays will be to very high standards of interpretation and collections care.

The ground floor lecture room Foyer development will facilitate community heritage and family history activities, with particular attention to access for people with disabilities.

Balch’s Study is on the ground floor of the museum and is currently not part of the displays. Bringing the room into use will make it possible to show material relating to H.E. Balch not currently seen and give context to the adjacent archaeology and caving displays. Balch was an archaeologist and pioneer cave explorer, the founder of the museum.

The project will cover such themes as:

• Early Wells – the stories of ordinary people who lived in the city
• Governance – the royal charters which granted rights to the city’s inhabitants – Social care – almshouses, hospitals, and the Bath & Wells Lunatic Asylum – The impact of war on the city – from the English Civil War to the World Wars of the 20th Century
• Transport and Communication – the coming of the railways and the impact on trade and agriculture – the ‘Strawberry Line’
• Phillips Studio – documenting social history. The museum holds a significant collection of images from the Phillips City Photographic Studio which has been digitized and will be made accessible to the public for the first time
• Public entertainment – celebrating the City’s tradition of public entertainment by the community for the community through plays, pageants, and carnival.

The project will allow the museum to re-focus its learning activities for schools and colleges, and be part of an improved integrated heritage offer by organisations with heritage interests in the city.

Role of the Interpretation Design and Build contractor

The successful company/candidate will:

• Work with the client to review the current interpretation proposal and develop the detail design from the approved scheme
• Work with the museum’s professional team and the museum manager to ensure the design, interpretation and build works are co-ordinated with the activities of the museum which will remain open to the public throughout
• Supply and install structures and joinery, electrics and lighting, decorate and make good
• Supply and install display cases, Audio Visual Hardware and Software. Design and install graphics
• Attend post-opening snagging meetings
• Supply management and maintenance schedules, specifications and costs. Role of Wells & Mendip Museum

The museum’s professional team will:

• Work with the successful candidate to develop the final list of images, objects, themes and stories
• Develop the text and images for the graphic panels using in-house resources based on guidance from the successful company/ candidate as to length of text and numbers of images required
• Provide all the images to be used at a suitable resolution.

Budget:

Funding has been secured from private sources as well as with support from The National Lottery Heritage Fund. The budget for interpretation design and build is up to £78,500. The budget for related professional fees is up to £20,000.

Interested parties are asked to make a submission via e-mail by 5:00pm Friday 1st April 2022, outlining:

• How they would breakdown the budget against the areas of cost identified above
• What relevant experience they would bring to the project and the value they would add – including at least 2 examples of similar scale work
• What resources would be allocated along with CVs and daily rate for personnel involved.

Selection criteria will include sufficient experience of delivering similar sized projects, sufficient capacity to deliver this project and work to the timescales, and cost/quality ratio.

Interviews will be held during the last two weeks of April 2022.

In the first instance please contact David Walker, Curator, Wells & Mendip Museum, Telephone: 01749 880630, E-mail: [email protected]