The Norwich Science Museum, currently housed in the disused St Michael at Coslany church in Colegate is due to close next month as funding from their parent body has been withdrawn and the various councils that plague Norfolk are not going to cough up to keep this popular attraction open.
It gets thousands and thousands of children a year and is a marvellous place for the kids, a chance to, as the official name of the place has it, Inspire them to look at science - in a building that has had a history of trying to curb it!
The church, of course, claims a unique ethical stance. Dogs bollocks to that. There was one priest in the early twentieth century who tried to demonstrate gravity did not exist but was a fraud of Newton's to discredit faith. The majority of Christians don't have a problem with science. Only a few ethical extremists who probably worry that they will be personally held to account by the Almighty by something someone else did...
The building now is in the hands of the Norwich Historic Churches Trust. Desperately preserving the past. Science is about the future.
I had a chat with one of the people who runs the place today as I took my kids for a farewell riot in the place. Norfolk County council refuses to even pick up the 'phone when Inspire try to get in touch. That's conservatives for you. 'I don't use it so its not important.' Norwich City Council has helped before but no more.
I imagine spending a small fortune on the most expensive set of park benches in history has something to do with that. These marble monstrosities earned Norwich a thumbs up from the Sculptors central body. But these images of a brain, an eye and what frankly looks like turds are supposed to make us, citizens of Norwich pauses and reflect whilst munching on our Macdonalds on a seventeenth century SCIENTIST and philosopher. He's one of the few people Norwich can boast about - and no one else remembers... The benches were controversial at the time and accounts in the press at the time suggested dissent was stamped on.
Hooray for the Arts. Would we suffer if we never had Shakespeare? It would be a pity never to have had Macbeth or Taming of the Shrew. Who would be the poorer without those benches - except the sculptor, but I'm sure he / she / they are not short of work.
So we're going to become even more a nation of consumers, depending on the rest of the world to suckle us, build things for us, do the thinking for us because - as we all know - everything stays the same always. One day we are going to wish we hadn't squandered our industry just to stamp on the unions, didn't outsource contractors, and encouraged science and engineering at all levels rather than go for the cheaper and popular options in universities.
Which brings us back to science. We are still suspicious of science. Its either evil, misguided and open to abuse, or just an extension of the entertainment division.
The science museum was entertaining and instructive and artistic and gave an empty, beautiful shell a life.
Councils and Governments are obsessed with emulating ICI or Tescos. But they forget somethings in life need constant support. Children are not exactly revenue generating but we parents still have them. The same is for education.
Inspire did not set out to make a profit.
Just Inspire.
