The first ever Gulbenkian Prize for museums and galleries has been awarded to the National Centre for Citizenship and the Law (NCCL), housed in the Galleries of Justice in Nottingham.
A unanimous decision by the 2003 judges meant that the Centre beat three other short-listed contenders to win the UK?s richest arts prize, worth £100,000. The prize is funded by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and awarded for what is considered to be the most innovative and inspiring idea developed in a UK museum or gallery. Announcing the winner, Bamber Gascoigne, chair of the judges, said: "We were all immensely impressed by the dedication and inventiveness with which the whole staff of NCCL had tackled a very challenging problem ? that of using their museum?s rich resources to bring alive the potentially very; dry subject of citizenship, whether in real-life cases re-enacted in authentic court rooms or through using the forbidding old prison to put crime and punishment in a historical perspective. Teachers will be grateful to them, and their experiment is one which others elsewhere will be able to follow and develop.
Published: 02-06-2003