Intelligent design (ID) has never really gained much of a foothold in the UK – at least compared to the United States where evolution isn’t as widely accepted and a high-profile think tank, the Discovery Institute, peddles its philosophies.

The newly launched Centre for Intelligent Design aims to change all that. So far the centre has a crisp-looking website and a small office in Glasgow. Its director Alistair Noble hopes to launch a series of public lectures promoting ID. The first, which he plans to announce soon, will feauture a prominent American proponent of ID. The centre has no formal connection to other ID-promoting organizations in the United States or the UK, and it is only informally linked to the Discovery Institute, Noble says.

For the time being, the organization isn’t looking to promote ID in Britain’s schools, Noble says. “I would stress that we’re not targeting schools.”

Yesterday, Britain’s Department for Education, said in a statement that ID and Creationism have no place in the science curriculum.

James Gray, at the British Humanist Association, had not heard of the new ID centre, though he does not think it represents much of a sea change for ID in Britain. “There’s only a small number of people who are into this kind of stuff and it tends to be same few people,” he says.