Glasgow Science Centre chief executive Stephen Breslin, pictured here alongside a model of a diseased smoker from the £2 million Bodyworks exhibition, has laid out his plans for the future of the five star visitor attraction as the first anniversary of his assuming the post approaches.
Sponsored by the health charity Wellcome Trust and pharmaceutical giant GSK, the hi-tech, family-oriented exploration of human biology is planned to run until 2019, a key part of Breslin's strategy to boost visitor numbers to the £6m turnover attraction, which are expected to total over 400,000 this year.
"Bodyworks is a step change to anything we have done before." He said. "There are individual pods for different areas of human physiology using the latest technology and story-telling techniques to explain that most complex of entities, the human body, and we can update it to keep it relevant as we develop new ideas,"
An electrical engineer with a PhD from Strathclyde University, Breslin's remitis to revamp the GSC's business plan to maximise revenues and manage costs. Opened in 2001, the titanium-coated venue's 2000 square metres of exhibition entrails major managerial and financial challenges: cleaning the windows alone costs £10,000..
As well as doing a management deal with Cineworld, which will invest £1m in new projection equipment in the venue's IMAX cinema, Breslin has developed the events and corporate programme to include TV chefs and celebrity scientists. He is working on reactivating the venue's notoriously non-functional Glasgow Tower, and with utility firms to develop a new exhibition on energy supply entitled Powering the Future.
The centre earns £1.18 in admissions annually, with £2.29 from corporate activities.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article