On Your Doorstep

Understanding objectives

To kick off the exhibition design process, our PDR team facilitated a workshop with the Amgueddfa Cymru project team to foster a shared understanding of project stakeholder needs and those of potential audiences at Oriel Y Parc and further afield.

Following the workshop, the curators shared a list of carefully selected objects from the Museum’s extensive collections for us to incorporate into our exhibition design. The objects chosen included archaeological finds from the local area and natural science specimens occurring within Pembrokeshire. The Amgueddfa Cymru project team included curators and conservators from natural sciences, botany, invertebrate biodiversity, archaeology, pre-history and numismatics. This extent of wide-ranging collaboration is unusual for the museum, which presented us with the challenge of incorporating all of the features effectively, but also enhanced the potential of the project’s final outcome.

Co-design

With the project objectives identified and the exhibition items specified it was time for our team to apply our spatial design expertise. After visiting the site and creating a CAD model of the space, we further harnessed the museum team’s knowledge by running a co-design session with activities tailored to exploring exhibition content, interactivity, inclusiveness and examining potential visitor journeys before, during and after a visit to the exhibition.

In the session we discussed how different objects may be used as a centrepiece and how we could weave different narratives between objects for specific target audiences. We considered the values of Pembrokeshire Coast National Park and how the exhibition can inspire visitors to care for and to learn about it with an emphasis on interaction and storytelling.

With these links identified, we were able to design different zones of artefacts throughout the exhibition to create a cohesive journey through themes of exploration, ecology and heritage.

Our initial proposal included tactile experiences, lighting and soundscapes to emulate the natural environment and bring the exhibition closer to the outdoors. We also wanted to create opportunities for the audience to capture their discoveries within the exhibition and share their own experiences with the public. This was done to adhere to Amgueddfa Cymru’s wider ambition of being a museum of listeners, capturing stories as well as telling them.

Developing and delivering the exhibition

With a narrative and finalised concept, the team moved on to a phase of detailed design - creating technical drawings to support the build and install. Through this phase we worked closely with the Amgueddfa Cymru team to understand the requirements regarding the install, security and conservation of the collections.

As Amgueddfa Cymru specialists and interpreters from Pembrokeshire Coast National Park worked together to create an interpretation plan, the PDR team worked with build partners, Aquilla Concepts, to ensure the designs came to life ready for the opening of the exhibition. Once the exhibition build was underway, we turned our attention to print media, ensuring an engaging and clear graphic design style was used to communicate the text and images to visiting audiences.