Culture Coventry
Coventry Transport Museum is managed by the Culture Coventry charitable trust.
Culture Coventry manages Coventry’s accredited museums: The Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, Coventry Transport Museum and the Lunt Roman Fort. Additionally, Culture Coventry recently restored and now manages the Grade 1 listed Old Grammar School and is also responsible for Coventry’s archives and local studies through the Coventry Archives at the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum.
Culture Coventry is an independent charitable Trust managed by a Board of Trustees. It was created in 2013 from the merger of Coventry Heritage and Arts Trust and the Museum of British Road Transport Trust. Culture Coventry evolved from Local Authority heritage services and museums trusts, and Coventry City Council continue to support the organisation as its key funder under a Service Level Agreement.
The Trust’s direction and focus for the next four years have been purposefully aligned to the seven Principles, five Goals and seven Big Ideas for Cultural Growth articulated in Coventry’s Cultural Strategy 2017-2027. The core activities of the organisation will contribute to developing the city’s place partnerships; promote lifelong learning; celebrate diversity; contribute to improving health and wellbeing and support economic growth.
The Trust’s vison, aims and attributes have been shaped and tested within this framework, to place Culture Coventry’s staff, resources, museums and galleries at the heart of the welcome to ‘The Nation in Coventry’ as the ‘City is a Festival’ for UK City of Culture 2021.
Coventry Transport Museum aims to educate and inspire visitors through the history and development of vehicle manufacturing in Coventry over the last 150-years; highlighting Coventry’s transport heritage and its central place in the British car industry. The museum has 14 exhibition spaces that tell the stories of the people that lived and worked in the city through the road transport vehicles they produced.
In June 2015, a £9.5 million redevelopment of Coventry Transport Museum was completed, which has transformed 13 of its 14 exhibition spaces, including a new permanent World Land Speed Record Exhibition. The redevelopment also included the creation of expanded and redeveloped learning spaces and conference spaces, a temporary exhibition gallery, plus a new front entrance and retail site. Coventry Transport Museum’s internationally recognised and Designated Collection has been redisplayed within a radically redefined and redesigned layout.