The Science Museum is to put its entire collection on permanent public view for the first time, by transforming its satellite site near Swindon into a vast interactive gallery.

A £64 million redevelopment of a disused RAF airfield at Wroughton, Wiltshire, called Inspired, will allow the museum to display the 92 per cent of its 250,000 artefacts currently kept in storage, in what is thought to be the first facility of its kind in the world.

Visitors will be able to create their own tours of objects such as the original design models for Concorde and a steam cabinet commissioned for Buckingham Palace by George V, for which the museum has no space at its London headquarters in South Kensington.

Other treasures include a canary “ambulance” used to revive stricken birds that were kept to alert miners to the presence of toxic gas and models used in computer special effects, such as for the animated film Antz.

Most of the items will be permanently accessible and visitors who apply in advance will be able to see any deemed too fragile or valuable for permanent display. Museum executives hope that the Science Museum 2 project will open in 2010, if it wins a £50 million lottery grant under the Living Landmarks: the People’s Millions competition.

Inspired is one of six schemes shortlisted for the award by the Big Lottery Fund. The successful project will be chosen by ITV viewers in a special programme to be screened in December. Other shortlisted entries include projects from the Eden Centre in Cornwall, the Sustrans national cycle route network and the Black Country Urban Park.

Professor Martin Earwicker, director of the museum, said: “We are looking to bring this to the public in an exciting and innovative way, creating an Aladdin’s cave where children and adults can discover science and technology.”

The concept, he said, would be different from that of a traditional museum. Instead of being conducted through themed galleries, visitors will be invited to explore the collection for themselves, picking out items that capture their interest and download audio and video guides on to MP3 players or mobile phones to learn more.

There will be hands-on workshops and children will be invited to sleepovers in the galleries so that they can immerse themselves in stories of science and technology – one plan is to demonstrate rockets by firing them down the former airfield’s runway.

The redevelopment was proposed five years ago by Lindsay Sharp, the museum’s last director, who had wanted to turn Wroughton into an environmentally themed “ecopark”.

His scheme drew criticism from museum staff, who thought that, since budgets were tight, it would be wrong to move into a new area.

Professor Earwicker said that he agreed with Dr Sharp’s core idea but that Inspired would focus on improving access to its existing collection.

The new accessible storage area will have a volume of more than 27,000 cubic metres.

In the limelight

— Plastic turtle and duck swept overboard in North Pacific in 1992 and washed up in Alaska. Used to track ocean drift patterns

— TV weather forecast maps and magnetic stickers, from 1974

— Cloned mouse created by the University of Hawaii in 1998 and the mouse that donated the egg used in the cloning procedure

— Field medical kit used by Sir Ernest Shackleton, the Antarctic explorer, in 1907

“Refuse Cruise” banner used by CND at Greenham Common in the early 1980s

— Telescope used by Dr James Lind to observe the 1769 transit of Venus. He has been suggested as the model for Mary Shelley’s Doctor Frankenstein

Source: Science Museum

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