PROJECT PROGRESS
STEPS ALONG THE PATH
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We have defined a vision and purpose for NCMI, some of which is presented below.
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We have created a business and financial plan, which will require adaptation based on site-specific considerations.
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We have identified an iconic site, the terms of which are currently under discussion.
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We are actively seeking funding for both the initial design stages of the NCMI (which are not site dependent) and for the build and fit-out, which will follow when a suitable site has been secured. Please click the Donate button above to help secure the future of this unique national experience.
THE NARRATIVE JOURNEY
The visitor journey map below seeks to show the narrative journey that visitors will take, following the processes of direction, collection, processing and dissemination that form the continuous Intelligence Cycle. It will also show that how the intelligence is used, or not, also feeds back into that same cycle.
WHAT YOU COULD EXPECT TO SEE:
An illustrative example of what the new museum may look like, Images are provided as a style guide not as a representation of proposed layout or content
A thin red line leads up the entrance to NCMI. It is the line between truth and lie. Graffiti blocks guard the path – from Berlin, Belfast and Helmand. A watchtower rises above buildings draped with Soviet, Nazi and Maoist symbols, painted in different camouflage hiding figures and facts. By the entrance stands a signpost pointing to Sedgemoor, Trafalgar, El Alamein, the Falklands and Helmand, and to Kentish skies.
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In front is a vine-covered Cypriot café with EOKA posters; to the left a watchtower with commanding views over the surrounding area. Climb the tower and test your observation skills. Inside the tower is an escape room-style experience: try your hand at escaping Napoleon’s Peninsula troops, or Gestapo counter-intelligence, or harder still break in to North Korea. Beside the tower is the Memorial Garden, with plants symbolizing secrecy, loyalty and remembrance. Here are commemorated the fallen of British Intelligence, including unnamed agents. Here too are plants representing the many allies who have grown from us or fought alongside us.
ENTRANCE
Enter the light welcoming reception, with its ceiling rose and unit mottoes. There is a shop with surprising gifts and serious reference works. The phone App alerts you to a new NCMI mission. Tablets are available too. You have been assigned a name of someone who served in, or with, British military intelligence. Follow their story and visit their memorial on departure.
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As you enter the atmosphere changes – a gloomy and misty corridor of smaller rooms. The first, empty but for the flickering word ‘LISTEN’, is a welter of sounds – morse, sonar, radar sweeps, and radio crackle. The second flashes ‘LOOK’ as floor and walls are a mass of photos, videos, infra-red shots, satellite images and blurred surveillance photos. The third is ‘TALK’ with pictures of agents, sounds of conversations, many languages, and TV clips. Then a room where light begins to be shed. ‘THINK’. Mathematical and textual analysis covers the wall, marked maps on the floor, analysed images on the ceiling. Finally two longer rooms. Here we answer ‘what is intelligence’ and ‘who are the intelligencers’ and we turn into the world as it is now – a mass of unexplained data.
THE DATA ROOM
The data room is the central heart of the building. Here we UNDERSTAND. The upper walls and ceiling are filled with live and recorded data – weather, flight patterns, internet flows, shipping in the Channel, satellite tracks, phone data, oil trade, the stock market and more. The lower walls explain the nature of information, about deception and analysis, prediction and when to decide enough is enough. Examine data in detail and watch it change as you switch off the internet, block sea channels, or close borders. Pass through the checkpoint-style entrance to the main hall.
THE MAIN HALL
A Soviet tank faces you. To the left surveillance cars. To the right a wall pierced by multiple missile heads. From the ceiling hang satellites and a Predator drone, above a cut-open mini submarine. What does the tank mean ? Nothing until you see it through intelligence eyes. Walk round the surrounding screens. Hear the commander speak, meet the crew (how tired are they, how scared ?), see the infra-red and radar signatures, reverse-engineer its armour, interpret its markings. Work out what is going on and, most importantly, choose what to do about it, and when.
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More is on the App as you move around, coloured so you know which part of intelligence you are dealing with. Augmented reality is on both tablets and phones. Hold them up to see different views inside objects, and to animate displays. Put the headphones on to hear snippets of information in secret hotspots – a bugged room, decoded message, news report. Find them all and you win a prize.
MISSILE WALL
The missile wall tells of the effort against the V1 and V2, Exocet, Scud and terrorist bombs, and the sources and people that beat them. The Predator hangs above the Medmenham Geoint/Imint display. Around the X-craft mini-submarine we learn of close reconnaissance. Beside it looms a C19 semaphore tower. An excited group of children rush to develop film and produce an imagery report in a restored processing centre. We also hear of the Civil War, Nelson, Crimea, Boers, the Somme, Peenemunde, Korea, Malaya, Falklands, N Ireland, Cold War, Falklands, Iraq, Bosnia and Afghanistan.
ANALYSIS
The analysis room is humming for analysis and deception, humming with games and questions asking you to test your analytical skills, and tell truth from lie. Interactive videos enable visitors to collect information, then see the consequences of their decisions.
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THE CINEMA
Popular are the ten minute shows in the cinema. One explains intelligence by casting brief glimpses of information across the whole of the dark room: some stay, some fade, different sources, different credibility. Another flies you into the internet to see the advertisers, foreign spies, influencers, political groups and criminals who are trying to follow you and change your life. Some tell more conventional stories of history or individuals. All are immersive. This cinema and part of the main hall are available for meetings, events and film shows out of opening hours.
THE ESCAPE ROOM
Test your new found skills of collecting and analysing intelligence in the Escape Room experience. Avoid the enemy and spot the deception.
INTELLIGENCER ROOMS
Back through the Main Hall you pass through quieter rooms explaining what it takes to be an intelligencer – the skills and qualities. Courage (moral and physical), integrity, honesty, tenacity, innovation and inquisitiveness. Here we can see and research the medals won by intelligencers. The last gives you a chance to see if you too could be an intelligencer. Special exhibition rooms hold anniversary, travelling or special temporary exhibitions.
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A corridor leads back out to Reception, the shop and your chance to visit the memorial garden and find the inscription to the intelligencer you chose at the beginning.
COLD WAR CAFÉ
For a break pop in to the Cold War café with maps and imagery across floors and tables. On cold days the screens across the windows show super-slow imagery of Soviet exercises. On fine days the glass doors pull back to give access to the outdoor Cypriot grill.
