Temporary Fine Arts Storage for the Arts Collection

The British Council is looking for temporary professional commercial operational storage for its art Collection.

The British Council Collection was established in 1938 and contains more than 8,700 modern and contemporary works by prominent and emerging UK artists and includes paintings, prints and drawings, photography, sculpture, multi-media and installation. It is managed by the Visual Arts Department.

The collection is currently housed in West London in a building which has now served its purpose as a collection centre, is too small, inefficient and is putting the collection at risk. The British Council has determined that the best course of action is to place the collection in safety and procure the services of a Commercial Art Storage organisation to provide temporary storage until such time as a permanent replacement for the existing store is found.

The British Council will require this storage provision for at least a year. If the model selected proves to provide an effective solution, we would look to extend this to a period of up to 5 years.

It is important to recognise that the British Council intends to operate the Collection activities at the same level or like that which it currently carries out. We are not looking for a 'mothball storage solution'.

The Scope of Services include but are not limited to:

The following categories 1. Provision of secure, environmentally controlled storage space of art works in Greater London 2. Provision of Racking or other storage facilities to allow for accessing the works 3. Provision of space separate to the storage space for packing of art works 4. Provision of facilities for transporting Art works (loading bay, transportation, goods receipt etc) 5. Provision of space for viewing/displaying works 6. Provision of a Crate making service (if not provision of space below) 7. The ability for BC staff to work from the store on a flexible basis 8. Provision of logistical support for the relocation of the art work from the existing store.

The optional requirements include: 1. Provision of a laboratory environment conservation space 2. Access to or provision of space that will facilitate a workshop [for framing, crate making and packing] 3. The provision of office space/hot desks for staff 4. The provision of a crate making service 5. The provision of an area for Quarantine for works returning from overseas. 6. Provision of pull out racking for frames/cased artworks 7. Provision of a separate British Council demise within a storage facility

Due to the sensitive nature of the information in the tender documentation, the full tender pack will only be released to tenderers able to sign and return a 2 way Non-Disclosure Agreement [NDA].

Please register at https://in-tendhost.co.uk/britishcouncil and access the NDA by 26 July 2018.

Additional information: Full tender pack is available when the interested organisation has signed and returned a 2 Way Non Disclosure Agreement.