The big cats of Bovington are once again about to play a starring role. The newly acquired Canadian Leopards and the famed Tiger Tank, as well as about 300 other models at the Tank Museum in Dorset, will be used to help attract sponsors for the much awaited and needed redevelopment of the site.
The Tank Museum sits on a Ministry of Defence (MoD) training camp in Bovington, the region where the armoured vehicles were first seen in 1916, and has turned viewing tanks from 26 countries into a fine art. So much so that Patrick Wright, the author of Tank: the Progress of a Monstrous War Machine, describes the experience of visiting as 'better than an art museum'. For some, perhaps, but now the museum needs to draw out the human stories to broaden its appeal.
Enter Richard Smith, the first non-military man to be appointed director of the museum. He started in the spring and is revved up to push the museum ahead into its next phase.
Smith, 34, is motivated by a simple fact: this is his dream job. This isn't lip-service. Here is a man who spent much of 1994 immersing himself in the museum's archive while researching the first world war Battle of Cambrai as part of reading history at university.
His new job has required Smith to take a significant pay cut, having spent the past 11 years in commercial and project management at shipping firm P&O Nedlloyd, where he worked in the UK, US and Hong Kong. He was probably earning a fortune in museum terms, but still says it was an easy decision to move on, as he has had his eye on the Tank Museum job for some time - although he admits the MoD salary he is on helps.
'It is the combination of working on something that I feel is genuinely important in an area where my hobby and my job overlap,' says Smith. 'It doesn't feel like work.' It is not museums per se that interest him. 'I didn't move into the museum field, I moved into this museum.' And the role allows him to work with his passion, without putting his business experience out to pasture.
Smith comes to the task with clarity about what the museum needs and how it should be prioritised. 'We are telling only one story - that of the incremental development of armoured warfare,' he says. 'I think we tell it very well up to the end of the second world war, and then we get more scattergun.'
He says the displays have a static air and a 'car-parky' feeling of cramming as many vehicles in as possible.
The first step to putting things right is organising the supporting collections to the tanks: the medals, the uniforms, the personal effects and artworks. These items will be used to tell a richer story.
The new Supporting Collections Study Centre (SCSC) will include a photographic studio (the museum makes £20,000-£30,000 a year from images) and three large rooms have been set aside for the artefacts.
About 90 per cent of these items are at risk of environmental damage, as they are housed in poorly controlled wooden huts. The Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) has provided £344,000 for the development of the supporting collections.
The idea is that some will be displayed and some will be made available for education and research. Others will be incorporated into the main tank displays, but many will have to be stored. The new centre should be finished by next spring.
But visitors will still have to contend with a site that is hard to navigate. The study centre will be located away from the main tanks display, which will not be redeveloped until at least 2009. That is if the funding required comes through to match the money from the HLF, which recently granted an additional £1.1m to the project taking the amount it has given to £9.6m. Smith will have the complex job of keeping the museum going while major building works are under way.
The highlight of the redevelopment will be a display of 35 key vehicles telling the history of tank development, complemented by audiovisuals and some of the supporting collections. The chronological story of tank development will be abandoned and a thematic, interchangeable display introduced. Altering the displays will, of course, require regular fundraising activity.
The existing exhibition hall, which is now wall to wall with tanks, will become the Discovery Centre. This will tackle the issues of why and how the tanks came to Bovington, as well as the experience of the crews, the regiments and their families - exploring more closely the lives of these men and their war machines.
German second world war tank the Tiger 131, the only working one of its kind in the world, will continue to be seen in action by visitors. A new restaurant will have views of the spectacle, while a memorial garden is also planned.
'The whole place is being transformed from a top-class 1970s museum into a world-class 21st-century one,' says Smith.
At least the museum's core costs are taken care of by the MoD - a very nice position to be in. The 50-year lease alone, covered by the ministry is worth about £50m.
Smith says there is strong indication of support from the South West of England Regional Development Agency, and adds that a £300,000 pledge by British Aerospace is a sign that the defence industry hasn't forgotten about the Tank Museum. Smith hopes this support from British industry will help get foreign donors in places such as the US and the Middle East to back the project.
He also sees great potential in eliciting funds from regimental associations - allowing the old soldiers a chance to give money has proved successful so far, with the number of completed direct debit forms on the increase. The museum, whose main audience is young families, is starting to turn its gaze on a major untapped audience: the retired.
The museum continues to collect tanks - Smith asserts that they are not dead technology - but finding environmentally controlled space for them is an ongoing issue.
With wars raging around the world (tanks used in the first Gulf conflict have recently expanded the museum's collections), how will the museum address the issues surrounding British involvement in the Middle East?
'We are trying to help people think about it, rather than judge it,' says Smith. 'We are looking at the people who have gone [to war], not those who sent them.
I think there is particular unanimity between soldiers, whether or not there is agreement between those who sent them.'
Like many visitor attractions with ample parkland offering a perfect setting for picnics, there is the risk that visitors won't venture inside the museum itself, and so avoid paying the entrance fee. Smith is considering introducing a nominal charge to watch the tanks-in-action extravaganza. 'The litmus test is whether they leave at 4pm [when the tank show finishes],' says Smith.
Perhaps most important is the need to entice people back. Smith says more than half of visitors are repeat customers - but the average gap between visits is 20 years. Smith is guilty of this himself. 'Having saturated myself in the museum in 1994, I probably fell foul of our most common visitor problem,' he says.
Smith is a laid-back, clued-up and amiable chap. His thin and bespectacled guise hints at geekishness. Such a description seems unfair, until he starts explaining how he intends to boost the museum's customer base. Smith feels the best way to make his point is to draw on the white board behind him. I suddenly feel as if I am in a seminar. Putting the lid back on his marker, he declares: 'I like drawing graphs.'
Summer is the Tank Museum's busiest period. It is Smith's mission to make it a year-round attraction. 'All consultants draw squares now instead of circles - things change,' he says. Then he launches into another graph showing which segments will be targeted: those who are interested but live far away, and those who are nearby but unsure of their interest.
Preservation planning is another major consideration. Smith says it will be necessary to look at the tanks one by one to 'make sure we have still got a collection in 100 years' time'.
Before Smith arrived, the vision was for the museum to become a distinct part of the community. He describes the locality as an area of high rural poverty and is keen to continue project work with young offenders, offering them work experience in areas such as the renovation of the tanks. The study centre will enhance the museum's aim of becoming a community base.
When the facelift is complete, the museum predicts the annual number of visitors will rise 50 per cent to 180,000. If it achieves this, it will put the museum in a stronger position to forge partnerships and work with other members of the Army Museums Ogilby Trust, which supports the activities of military museums.
The Tank Museum sits on a Ministry of Defence (MoD) training camp in Bovington, the region where the armoured vehicles were first seen in 1916, and has turned viewing tanks from 26 countries into a fine art. So much so that Patrick Wright, the author of Tank: the Progress of a Monstrous War Machine, describes the experience of visiting as 'better than an art museum'. For some, perhaps, but now the museum needs to draw out the human stories to broaden its appeal.
Enter Richard Smith, the first non-military man to be appointed director of the museum. He started in the spring and is revved up to push the museum ahead into its next phase.
Smith, 34, is motivated by a simple fact: this is his dream job. This isn't lip-service. Here is a man who spent much of 1994 immersing himself in the museum's archive while researching the first world war Battle of Cambrai as part of reading history at university.
His new job has required Smith to take a significant pay cut, having spent the past 11 years in commercial and project management at shipping firm P&O Nedlloyd, where he worked in the UK, US and Hong Kong. He was probably earning a fortune in museum terms, but still says it was an easy decision to move on, as he has had his eye on the Tank Museum job for some time - although he admits the MoD salary he is on helps.
'It is the combination of working on something that I feel is genuinely important in an area where my hobby and my job overlap,' says Smith. 'It doesn't feel like work.' It is not museums per se that interest him. 'I didn't move into the museum field, I moved into this museum.' And the role allows him to work with his passion, without putting his business experience out to pasture.
Smith comes to the task with clarity about what the museum needs and how it should be prioritised. 'We are telling only one story - that of the incremental development of armoured warfare,' he says. 'I think we tell it very well up to the end of the second world war, and then we get more scattergun.'
He says the displays have a static air and a 'car-parky' feeling of cramming as many vehicles in as possible.
The first step to putting things right is organising the supporting collections to the tanks: the medals, the uniforms, the personal effects and artworks. These items will be used to tell a richer story.
The new Supporting Collections Study Centre (SCSC) will include a photographic studio (the museum makes £20,000-£30,000 a year from images) and three large rooms have been set aside for the artefacts.
About 90 per cent of these items are at risk of environmental damage, as they are housed in poorly controlled wooden huts. The Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) has provided £344,000 for the development of the supporting collections.
The idea is that some will be displayed and some will be made available for education and research. Others will be incorporated into the main tank displays, but many will have to be stored. The new centre should be finished by next spring.
But visitors will still have to contend with a site that is hard to navigate. The study centre will be located away from the main tanks display, which will not be redeveloped until at least 2009. That is if the funding required comes through to match the money from the HLF, which recently granted an additional £1.1m to the project taking the amount it has given to £9.6m. Smith will have the complex job of keeping the museum going while major building works are under way.
The highlight of the redevelopment will be a display of 35 key vehicles telling the history of tank development, complemented by audiovisuals and some of the supporting collections. The chronological story of tank development will be abandoned and a thematic, interchangeable display introduced. Altering the displays will, of course, require regular fundraising activity.
The existing exhibition hall, which is now wall to wall with tanks, will become the Discovery Centre. This will tackle the issues of why and how the tanks came to Bovington, as well as the experience of the crews, the regiments and their families - exploring more closely the lives of these men and their war machines.
German second world war tank the Tiger 131, the only working one of its kind in the world, will continue to be seen in action by visitors. A new restaurant will have views of the spectacle, while a memorial garden is also planned.
'The whole place is being transformed from a top-class 1970s museum into a world-class 21st-century one,' says Smith.
At least the museum's core costs are taken care of by the MoD - a very nice position to be in. The 50-year lease alone, covered by the ministry is worth about £50m.
Smith says there is strong indication of support from the South West of England Regional Development Agency, and adds that a £300,000 pledge by British Aerospace is a sign that the defence industry hasn't forgotten about the Tank Museum. Smith hopes this support from British industry will help get foreign donors in places such as the US and the Middle East to back the project.
He also sees great potential in eliciting funds from regimental associations - allowing the old soldiers a chance to give money has proved successful so far, with the number of completed direct debit forms on the increase. The museum, whose main audience is young families, is starting to turn its gaze on a major untapped audience: the retired.
The museum continues to collect tanks - Smith asserts that they are not dead technology - but finding environmentally controlled space for them is an ongoing issue.
With wars raging around the world (tanks used in the first Gulf conflict have recently expanded the museum's collections), how will the museum address the issues surrounding British involvement in the Middle East?
'We are trying to help people think about it, rather than judge it,' says Smith. 'We are looking at the people who have gone [to war], not those who sent them.
I think there is particular unanimity between soldiers, whether or not there is agreement between those who sent them.'
Like many visitor attractions with ample parkland offering a perfect setting for picnics, there is the risk that visitors won't venture inside the museum itself, and so avoid paying the entrance fee. Smith is considering introducing a nominal charge to watch the tanks-in-action extravaganza. 'The litmus test is whether they leave at 4pm [when the tank show finishes],' says Smith.
Perhaps most important is the need to entice people back. Smith says more than half of visitors are repeat customers - but the average gap between visits is 20 years. Smith is guilty of this himself. 'Having saturated myself in the museum in 1994, I probably fell foul of our most common visitor problem,' he says.
Smith is a laid-back, clued-up and amiable chap. His thin and bespectacled guise hints at geekishness. Such a description seems unfair, until he starts explaining how he intends to boost the museum's customer base. Smith feels the best way to make his point is to draw on the white board behind him. I suddenly feel as if I am in a seminar. Putting the lid back on his marker, he declares: 'I like drawing graphs.'
Summer is the Tank Museum's busiest period. It is Smith's mission to make it a year-round attraction. 'All consultants draw squares now instead of circles - things change,' he says. Then he launches into another graph showing which segments will be targeted: those who are interested but live far away, and those who are nearby but unsure of their interest.
Preservation planning is another major consideration. Smith says it will be necessary to look at the tanks one by one to 'make sure we have still got a collection in 100 years' time'.
Before Smith arrived, the vision was for the museum to become a distinct part of the community. He describes the locality as an area of high rural poverty and is keen to continue project work with young offenders, offering them work experience in areas such as the renovation of the tanks. The study centre will enhance the museum's aim of becoming a community base.
When the facelift is complete, the museum predicts the annual number of visitors will rise 50 per cent to 180,000. If it achieves this, it will put the museum in a stronger position to forge partnerships and work with other members of the Army Museums Ogilby Trust, which supports the activities of military museums.
