Thanks to grants from Arts Council England, Persimmon Homes, Friends of the Vale and Downland Museum, Vale of White Horse District Council, South Oxfordshire District Council and the FCC Communities Foundation we are able to move forward with our exciting plans for this wonderful space.

The first phase of the redevelopment project is the exciting Living Landscape, which is a 4mWx1.8mH oil painting created by talented local artist Anna Dillon. The mural will be hung on the wall of our barn gallery (where you may remember a Formula 1 car previously lived).

The mural celebrates our stunning local landscape and its features, and some of the ways in which people have shaped that landscape.

We hope to have this on display by the summer 2026.

Volunteer Matthijs giving the wall a fresh coat of white paint.

Two days of hard work but it looks fabulous and ready for the Living Landscape artwork to be installed later in the year.

Behind the scenes, the curators and volunteers are working hard to gather all of the information and objects that will feature in the new gallery. They have been talking to lots of local residents to collect stories and memories of the local area linked to the key themes of rural crafts, engineering, science, technology and community. The next steps are to work with the design team to create the scripts for the gallery and to confirm the final design of the new movable display units based on the objects and images to be displayed.