Thinking Outside The Box, SS Great Britain, Bristol

Brunel’s SS Great Britain is a leading UK independent museum and rated as the top visitor attraction in Bristol.

In 2005, the Trust secured a long lease for the derelict dockyard where the SS Great Britain sits.

The site was split in half, and only the waterfront half with the ship was developed with a grant from the Heritage Lotter Fund
144 new flats were built inside the recreated industrial landscape, and their sale created a fund which has been invested for the long term.

The SS Great Britain Endowment Fund, from zero, now stands at some £5 ½ million. The Endowment Fund has transformed the SS Great Britain Trust’s balance sheet and set the course for the Trust for further investment and self-resilience, as well as significant protection from its former reliance on a hand-to-mouth basis of annual ticket sales.

In 2018, the Trust opened a new museum, Being Brunel, telling Brunel’s extraordinary story. Using interactive storytelling to help visitors appreciate the great engineer in new ways, it has six galleries housing 1,500 of Brunel’s personal artefacts, providing insights into his character and his influence on the world.

It includes a shaking broad-gauge railway carriage where ‘passengers’ compare their drawing skills to Brunel’s while travelling. Visitors also step ‘into Brunel’s mind’ for a multi-sensory cinema experience to observe extraordinary moments from his life through his eyes.