{"id":171,"date":"2009-07-27T09:02:03","date_gmt":"2009-07-27T09:02:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/?p=171"},"modified":"2013-11-17T22:18:34","modified_gmt":"2013-11-17T22:18:34","slug":"the-big-idea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/miscellaneous\/the-big-idea\/","title":{"rendered":"The Big Idea"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tucked down at the end of the Ardeer peninsula, the Big Idea Centre was an interactive museum – a Milennium Project, it had capital funding for construction but no ongoing support and was expected to make all it’s funding from visitors. That never happened – 120,000 visitors in the first year, 50,000 in the second were never going to keep the place running, and the much larger Glasgow Science Centre killed it off – it’s been closed since 2003.<\/p>\n

\"Big<\/a><\/p>\n

I first went for a look at the beginning of January – it’s not an easy place to get to, you have to skirt past several miles of live explosive factory. There’s a footbridge which connects the centre to the mainland which visitors would have used for much easier access, but it’s been left open to allow shipping through.<\/p>\n

\"Inventor's<\/a><\/p>\n

I used all my most l33t ninja skills, even crawling through the ventilation shafts running far under the building, but there was no way in – and the happy blinking red lights of the alarm system meant that that wasn’t going to be a good idea anyway. So I took some external shots and left.<\/p>\n

\"Not<\/a><\/p>\n

I’m not sure why I went back yesterday – perhaps a vague thought that I had missed something. Skirting the explosives factory and walking up to the centre, I turned the corner to almost walk into a big black Landrover. Oh oh. Well, I was there anyhow – no harm in asking. Walked up to the office door and knocked – and a big husky appeared on the other side of the glass and started barking madly. Double uh oh. Then his owner appeared. I explained myself, and asked if there was any chance of taking a few pictures inside the main building, expecting the usual Health and Safety excuses. “No problem – I’ll just turn off the alarm and put some lights on for you”!<\/p>\n

So, obviously, this is a with-permission visit, thanks to the very friendly person in charge. I didn’t have all that much time as he had to go off, but I think I covered the major areas…<\/p>\n

\"Mechanism<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Power<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Waiting<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Time<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Automatons<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Floating<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Cafe<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Shop<\/a><\/p>\n

There’s a huge amount on the Nobel factory – loads and loads of old photographs, interactive exhibits, old items and tucked away in a storeroom a really cool model of a Nitroglycerine plant.<\/p>\n

\"Alfred<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Theatre<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Nobel<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Learning<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Learning<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Speaking<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Nitroglycerin<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tucked down at the end of the Ardeer peninsula, the Big Idea Centre was an interactive museum – a Milennium Project, it had capital funding for construction but no ongoing support and was expected to make all it’s funding from visitors. That never happened – 120,000 visitors in the first year, 50,000 in the second […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1183,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/3762904255_da797ff56f_z.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3yGoo-2L","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1184,"href":"http:\/\/catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171\/revisions\/1184"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}