Being Brunel: inside the mind of the man who ‘built Britain’

Being Brunel: inside the mind of the man who ‘built Britain’

Statue of Brunel
A statue of the engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel
A museum with an unrivalled insight into the life and mind of Isambard Kingdom Brunel has opened in Bristol, thanks to £4.8million from National Lottery players.

In sight of one his most famous designs, the SS Great Britain, Being Brunel has the world’s most significant Brunel collection.

Being Brunel

As well as celebrating his famous creations and stepping inside the drawing office where he worked, visitors will get to know the human side of the great engineer.

Previously unseen letters, photos and stories will share Brunel’s personal life, how he dealt with failure and the impact of his family relationships.

Matthew Tanner, Chief Executive of SS Great Britain Trust, said: “By preserving Brunel’s legacy in this way, the museum aims to show what the man made and what made the man.”

Designed as a true experience of what being Brunel was like, the museum enables vistiors to:

  • Experience the sounds and scents of Brunel’s drawing office, which has been painstakingly recreated
  • Board a shaking 1830s broad-gauge railway carriage
  • See the world through Brunel’s eyes in a multi-sensory cinema experience

Future Brunels

The collections are also set to inspire future engineers.

As part of the National Lottery-funded education programme, the Future Brunels scheme aims to encourage and enthuse young people to study STEM (Science, Engineering and Maths) subjects at school, as well as introducing them to the careers these subjects could open up for them.

The Future Brunels are set to celebrate the museum’s grand opening on Friday 23 March – when it will also open its doors to the public for the first time.

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