In March 2015, the Trustees took the difficult decision to close the visitor centre and to channel its funds into supporting school curriculum activities and also those of the local community primarily for children.
The Trust has an excellent track record of supporting schools with funding to enhance their design and technology curriculum activities and aims to build on this good work by diversifying into other areas of providing funding to schools, community education projects and entrepeneurial programmes for 16 – 24 year olds.
The visitor centre was host to over 165,000 children and adults between April 2002 and April 2015, including c.78,000 children who visited the galleries to enhance their curriculum lessons in design and technology. This space is set to become an incubation hub for local young people.