National Marine Aquarium to build a learning centre
WORK is set to begin next month on a major new education-based development at the National Marine Aquarium.
The £500,000 learning centre will include a wet lab, science studio, TV studio and production suite, marine resources centre and new seminar rooms.
The new addition will be a major boost for the tourist attraction's already popular education programme.
"We try to use the interest in the marine animals as an opportunity to inspire pupils and to teach a wide variety of topics, not only science but art, maths, english and literacy, citizenship, even RE and history," said Paul Cox, head of science and learning.
"The new centre will give us the opportunity to broaden our programmes, particularly for secondary students and also allow us to reach out across the country through web-casting and videoconferencing."
The past year has seen bumper school crowds descend on the aquarium with educational visitor numbers doubling from 14,000 to 28,000 over the past five years.
Schools from all over the country have spent time at the site, with the aquarium also aiming to work more with local schools.
"It's fantastic that our educational output is highly valued by local teachers and it really is an honour to work with so many schools and seeing record numbers of pupils leaving having learnt so much about the marine environment," said Mr Cox.
Next year the aquarium will be working in partnership with the University of Plymouth and Plymouth local authority to launch a new programme based around the learning centre.
The Marine Academy Plymouth and the Plymouth Marine Sciences Partnership will also be involved in establishing a range of new events and activities to help people locally and across the country to get closer to the sea and marine life.
And at the heart of this new development will be a strong conservation and environmental message.
Work on the new centre, which has been funded by the South West Regional Development Agency and the Wolfson Foundation, will begin next month and should hopefully be complete by Christmas and open to the public in January 2011.
Comments
by JR, Barbican
Thursday, August 12 2010, 7:44AM
“Before building a new building, maybe someone could clean up the area around the building that's there now, when people from out of town visit the way in from Lockyers Quay it is a disgrace, I walk that way most days and it has not been tided up for months, stones and rubbish all over the path, the landscaped areas need a good going over, weeds and dog mess everywhere, it's no good trying to get the public to visit the "Aquarium" if they have to walk through all this mess, somebody must be in charge of whoever is supposed to clean this area and they are clearly not doing their job right, get it sorted !!”