For 225 years, our beautiful home at 21 Albemarle Street has served as a cornerstone of science communication, preserving history, inspiring curiosity, and educating visitors of all ages. Despite its remarkable legacy, our home faces pressing conservation and modernisation challenges. We seek support from individuals, businesses, and funding bodies to preserve and protect our iconic building, ensuring it remains a symbol of science and public engagement for future generations.
Time and environmental factors have taken their toll. Major works are required to ensure the preservation of the fabric of the museum and venue and create an enhanced visitor experience for the public and our members. The iconic theatre, the physical and spiritual heart of our building, which remains an active space for public engagement, is also in need of major renovation.
Alongside this is a need for critical equipment upgrades to maintain our reputation as a world class facility. The library and archives house a priceless collection of artefacts, scientists’ personal notebooks, manuscripts, letters, and personal items, making it a vital resource for researchers and historians and a source of inspiration for visitors from around the world. Specialist expertise is needed to maintain and share our collections; archivists, conservators, staff to enable access requests and give tours. The work of further opening up the collections through cataloguing, digitising, annotating, publishing and analysing all costs money, of course.
To foster a more open, family-friendly environment that embodies our vision of ‘science for everyone’, we must ensure that our foundations are solid, fit for the future and that we have the capability to respond to the needs and opportunities of a building and an organisation with such enduring potential to inspire and delight. The building itself is Grade 1 listed and the entire structure is of historic significance. Maintaining a heritage building with such an important legacy and balancing the needs of the charity require ongoing unrestricted support to ensure its longevity and continued impact.
Heritage buildings often face urgent issues that require quick and flexible solutions. For example, unexpected structural damage or the need for immediate conservation efforts on fragile artefacts cannot always be predicted. Unrestricted funding gives organisations like ours the financial freedom to prioritise these needs as they arise, without delaying work to identify or for the approval of specific project-based grants.
Ageing structures require consistent maintenance to preserve their historical value. This includes regular repairs, improvements to safety measures (such as fire safety and accessibility upgrades), and environmental control systems (like humidity and temperature management for artefacts).
Unrestricted funds enable museums and heritage sites to invest in long-term preservation efforts, create a reserve for unforeseen expenses, and remain strong and financially resilient. This safeguards our ability to continue to serve the public and preserve the history of our spaces for future generations.
The general operational costs of the Ri include salaries for staff, the public programme of science talks for both adults and families, exhibition maintenance, and day-to-day activities including vital systems and technology that underpins every function of the organisation. This is essential expenditure, and we must continue to prioritise enhancing our capabilities in order for the Ri to evolve and meet emerging need.
Secure and committed unrestricted funding is crucial for the ongoing preservation, maintenance, and adaptability of the Ri’s Albemarle Street home. It provides the foundation for us to proactively address challenges, maintain historical integrity, enhance our programmes, educate visitors of all ages and invest in long-term planning, to ensure that our doors remain open.
- Maintain and improve facilities – Our historic building requires constant upkeep, from structural repairs to conservation of historic features.
- Compete for the best people – Skilled professionals, including curators, educators, and archivists, are vital to our operations.
- Preserve and protect artefacts – Proper conservation techniques, climate control, pest control and storage are necessary to safeguard our irreplaceable historical collection.
- Expand our outreach programmes –tours, workshops, and lecture series all rely on funding to keep the Ri meaningful and accessible as well as for new generations.
- Enhance exhibits and visitor experience – Updating displays, developing interactive experiences, increasing accessibility and expanding digital access allow us to engage wider audiences.
Your contribution will help us to not only survive but thrive, ensuring that future generations can continue to learn from and be inspired by the Ri’s rich history. By supporting the Ri, you are playing your part and helping to protect and share the stories that define our charity and our future.
Together, we can ensure that the Ri remains a vital, living cultural resource for generations to come. Thanks to a generous legacy gift of £1,500,000, we are on our way towards meeting our £6,000,000 target to ensure a sustainable home for our charity for the future and the capability to invest where it is needed and plan with confidence. With your support, we can ensure that the Ri’s spaces and workforce remain world class.