The arts and culture scene in Swindon is a match for any other comparable town or city in the country.

That's according to the new cabinet member for culture, art and heritage, Marina Strinkovsky.

But less than a month into her new role she says that key to it all is getting the art gallery and museum opened in the Euclid Street civic offices.

Appointed at the end of May to the cabinet post as Labour took over the council for the first time in two decades, the councillor for Eastcott said her “absolute, laser-focused number one priority” is to get the exhibition space open again.

She said: “Art and culture is worth it for its own sake, it’s something that makes life worth living; and I really believe it was a traumatic blow for many people when the museum closed at the start of the lockdown.

“That time was so hard for everybody anyway, but to have the museum and gallery closed really was traumatic for a lot of people.”

The museum and art gallery was housed in Apsley House in Bath Road when it closed in March 2020.

It has not reopened since, and Apsley House has been put up for sale.

The council’s plans to open up the second floor of the Civic Offices building as a temporary - possibly lasting 10 years or more - museum and gallery have received planning permission. But serious work has not started and an initially mooted opening date this April has passed, and a revised date of the end of the year seems unlikely.

Coun Strinkovsky said: “I am pushing very hard to get things moving ahead. Work on the lift to the second floor should start within weeks. And conservation and restoration work on the gharial should be starting very soon as well."

Otherwise, Coun Strinkovsky said the image of Swindon as a town without a vibrant art scene is unfair and untrue.

She said: “We have so much going on, there was jazz in the Royal Oak a couple of days ago, there was choral music at Lydiard House two Sundays ago, there’s art being made everywhere, there’s theatre.

“Swindon is the complete package, it really is."