News / We The Curious
We The Curious staff to move back into fire-damaged building
We The Curious staff are preparing to move back into their fire-damaged building after a busy summer of activities across Bristol.
The science and education charity held a record 43 events during its summer holiday programme in 19 different locations including children’s centres, libraries and festivals.
The schools’ activity programme has now restarted as staff get ready to return to the building in October, 18 months after the fire that broke out in solar panels on its roof.
We The Curious chief executive, Donna Speed, said: “We haven’t let the closure of our building hold us back from delivering our mission of helping as many people to get curious as we can.
“This summer, our Out & About programme has resulted in some brilliant Bristol creativity – in the last few weeks we’ve got curious with almost 6,000 people, made 560 aliens, 137 robots, 36 constellations and marvelled at a life-sized cardboard dragon.
“Unfortunately we still don’t have certainty on a date when we can reopen – we are desperate to let audiences know when our building will be reinstated and open again.
“This journey has been far more challenging than we ever imagined as the nature of the damage, particularly from the water, and the complexities of our building have created some unique issues.
“The team moving back to the building is an exciting milestone. We know from the amazing public support we’ve had throughout this period and the feedback from our Out & About programme how much people want to see our building reopen and we remain absolutely committed to getting the repair work complete as soon as possible.
“We can’t wait to be able to open our doors early in 2024.”
We The Curious staff swiftly evacuated guests from the building after the fire broke out on April 9 2022 – photo: Martin Booth
Main photo & video: Martin Booth
Read next:
- We The Curious not likely to reopen until 2024
- World-first visitor experience to no longer be built in Bristol
- Popular bakery reopens in new location following fire
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