Imperial War Museums has secured more than £10 million in new support for IWM Lab, a major new conservation and training centre planned for IWM Duxford and due to open in 2029.
A grant of up to £10 million from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, alongside support from Bloomberg Philanthropies, brings the project significantly closer to completion. The new 10,000-square-metre facility will be designed to conserve and preserve some of the largest objects in IWM’s collection, including aircraft, tanks and other military vehicles.
IWM Lab will provide a new home for the museum’s conservation engineering team while expanding training and apprenticeship opportunities in heritage conservation. The centre will include dedicated learning and skills facilities, with training covering the safe use of equipment, conservation treatments and techniques, and research designed to ensure historic objects are preserved accurately and appropriately.
The facility will also make more of IWM’s large-object collection accessible to the public through guided tours and open days, offering visitors the chance to see conservation work taking place behind the scenes. Its scale and the range of material being cared for are also expected to make it a useful resource for historians, academics and researchers working across conservation and heritage skills.
Arts Minister Ruth Mackenzie said:
“Our huge thanks to Bloomberg Philanthropies for their contribution towards a new IWM learning and skills centre, alongside up to £10 million from DCMS to support an apprenticeship programme for the next generation of conservation technicians in museums.”
Caro Howell MBE, IWM Director-General, said:
“We are immensely grateful to DCMS and Bloomberg Philanthropies. Partnerships like these are vital not only to IWM’s future, but to the wider work of preserving significant national collections and ensuring specialist conservation skills are passed to future generations. This support brings IWM Lab within reach, creating a new home for conservation, training and apprenticeships, widening access to historic objects and strengthening our ability to care for them for generations to come.
“Some of the largest objects in our collection are truly awe-inspiring and especially popular with younger visitors. IWM Lab will transform our ability to conserve and showcase them, while opening routes for young people into highly skilled and fulfilling careers in conservation and cultural heritage.”
Ben Catling, Trainee Conservation Technician at IWM, added:
“Having been a visitor to IWM Duxford for my entire life, it has been an enormous privilege to join the Large Object Conservation Team at Duxford. One of the greatest parts of my role as a trainee is the opportunity to work with an incredibly diverse collection of historic vehicles and aircraft.
“IWM Lab will help to provide me and future apprentices with the specialist skill set, to protect these unique large objects for future generations to come.”
The project forms part of Transforming IWM Duxford, a wider multi-million-pound programme aimed at strengthening the museum’s role as a visitor destination, historic working airfield and centre for heritage conservation. By moving conservation and storage into IWM Lab, the museum will also be able to rethink existing exhibition areas across the Duxford site, integrating aircraft, land vehicles and other historic objects into more coherent displays and placing greater emphasis on the people who designed, built, flew, drove, repaired and preserved them.
The announcement builds on IWM’s existing relationship with both DCMS and Bloomberg Philanthropies. IWM has previously taken part in the Bloomberg Philanthropies Digital Accelerator Programme and Bloomberg Connects, while three historic rooms at Duxford — the Pilots’ Briefing Room, Air Crew Room and Pilots’ Locker Room — reopened in December 2025 following support from Bloomberg Philanthropies.
IWM Lab is scheduled to open at IWM Duxford in 2029. MORE: @imperialwarmuseums
