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Kilmartin Museum

Museums+Heritage Awards 2024 Permanent Exhibition – Highly Commended

Kilmartin Museum exterior and signage

Kilmartin Museum re-opened in September 2023 after a major £8m redevelopment. My role on the project as interpretation project manager began in late 2019. I worked closely with the very small core museum team over an eventful four years to develop their interpretive narrative, key messages and content. I helped the client to appoint exhibition designers Studioarc on a design and build contract and acted as the main point of contact between the client and design teams. 

The exhibition was shortlisted for best permanent exhibition in the 2024 Museums+Heritage awards and was awarded ‘Highly Commended’. 

The Museum’s new visitor experiences offer you the chance to journey back through 12,000 years. The exhibition uses the museum’s Nationally Significant collection, hands-on activities, new illustrations and replicas and audio-visual content to bring our ancestors’ stories to life in bold and captivating ways.

Museum website

Museums and Heritage Awards Highly Commended 2024
Kilmartin Museum interior

New building

The newly redeveloped museum was designed by architects Reiach and Hall. The new building links two existing buildings; a former manse where the old museum occupied the basement, and a steading where the cafe was (and will be again). The new visitor experience is now wheelchair accessible and offers views from the exhibition to the Glebe Cairn outside where key artefacts were discovered. The building also offers an enhanced welcome and orientation, shop, learning centre, labs and collection store. 

Showcase of Bronze Age pots

Nationally significant collection

The Prehistoric Collection at Kilmartin Museum is a unique collection of fundamental importance to understanding Scotland’s history. Many of the Museum’s objects were discovered or excavated at the Neolithic and Bronze Age sites and monuments in Argyll’s Kilmartin Glen, near to where the Museum building is located. The Museum’s setting in this landscape is important to the display of their collection, near the Upper Largie prehistoric site and overlooking an impressive cemetery of burial cairns.

Family friendly

The museum is a multi-sensory experience for all ages. It includes opportunities to get hands-on spinning fleece, grinding grain, decoding ogham writing and collecting stamps. 

There’s also a children’s activity guide for sale in the shop full of activities to do in the gallery, at home and out in the landscape. The book was written and illustrated by the talented duo Abby and Owen

Kilmartin Quest children's activity book front cover

Managing the interpretation for the new museum has involved working with so many talented companies and individuals. Dr Aaron Watson created brand-new bespoke illustrations bringing to life the Neolithic and Bronze Age. He also created the ‘making things’ videos featuring Dr James Dilley making metal and flint tools, and museum education officer Julia Hamilton making pottery and spinning fleece. 

Replica rock art was made for the exhibition using innovative and experimental new techniques by Think See 3D. A facial reconstruction was created by Oscar Nilsson in Sweden based on the skull of a woman buried at Upper Largie in Kilmartin Glen about 4,000 years ago. The immersive, evocative audio-visual was created by Bright Side Studios and features sound by Pippa Murphy. 

It was a fantastic experience to work with all these and more (mount makers, lighting designers, joiners, artists and Gaelic language experts) and to manage the project on behalf of such a fantastic museum in such a magical place. 

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Top Secret

This month (September 2019) I finally had the opportunity to travel to London to see an exhibition I had been working on from January which opened in early July when I was on holiday. This is one of the odd things about working on a freelance basis; sometimes you work remotely but quite intensively on a project then don’t see the opening day or see visitors enjoying it until months later.

In early 2019, I was asked to join the project team at the Science Museum Group working on an exhibition called ‘Top Secret’. The exhibition is about the work of British Intelligence organisation GCHQ and I was asked to help out with the more family-friendly elements of the exhibition. The subject matter which ranges from Bletchley Park code-breaking to Soviet spy rings and modern cyber hacking is fascinating to adults of all ages, but we were aware we would need a layer of more child-friendly interpretation to appeal to the whole family. The three main elements of the family interpretation were a children’s trail with in-gallery labels, a ‘puzzle zone’ where interactive puzzles could explore the kind of skills that are required to be an analyst or code breaker and a postcard with clues to find and a secret image to reveal. 

Science Museum, London, Top Secret

Science Museum, London, Top Secret

One part of my role was to assist the team with the 2D and 3D puzzles and be the main point of contact for the fabricators of the 3D puzzles. I worked with the team on the prototyping to ensure they were pitched at the right level and fun to complete and on writing labels which made them easy to use and focused on the skills involved. One of the biggest challenges was creating puzzles that were fun for all ages but accessible for children of age 8 or even below in some cases.

We developed some simple cipher wheels to allow visitors to code and decode secret messages. Some puzzles test the ability to find hidden words and make words out of random letters. Some test the ability to find patterns in shapes or numbers, while others are all about logical thinking and perseverance or memory. Others are just about looking at the world slightly differently.

Science Museum, London, Top Secret
Science Museum, London, Top Secret
Science Museum, London, Top Secret

For the trail of family labels, we settled on a character called Alice (Alice in Wonderland perhaps? there’s a bit of a subtle Lewis Carroll reference in there) to lead family visitors around the exhibition. There are ten of these children’s labels that encourage closer investigation of some of the objects and stories in the exhibition.

As well as Alice’s trail there’s also a postcard which children and families can carry around the exhibition with more clues and questions which this time let you know which parts of the image to colour in to reveal a hidden picture.

Science Museum, London, Top Secret postcard
Science Museum, London, Top Secret postcard

The exhibition opened to the public in early July and runs in London until February 2020, appearing in Manchester later that year. It has been popular and well-received by visitors and now that I’ve had a chance to visit properly and look at all the objects and the work of my colleagues on the stories I wasn’t involved in, I can certainly see why. I highly recommend catching this if you can.

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Scotland from the Sky 2

Scotland from the Sky part 2 shares some of the amazing aerial photography in the archives of Historic Environment Scotland that inspired series two of Jamie Crawford’s BBC Scotland series exploring Scotland from above.

I very much enjoyed the task of selecting images from this amazing collection to create an exhibition to further illustrate the themes of ‘Scotland’s Coast’ ‘Industrial Scotland’ and ‘A wild land?’.

Scotland from the Sky
Scotland from the Sky - coast

Scotland’s Coast

Nearly half of Scotland’s population lives close to the coast. Aerial photography of the 11,500 miles of coast around mainland Scotland and the islands shows fishing, tourism and leisure and, in some areas, the oil and gas and renewable energy industries.

Scotland from the Sky part 2 shares some of the amazing aerial photography in the archives of Historic Environment Scotland that inspired series two of Jamie Crawford’s BBC Scotland series exploring Scotland from above.

I very much enjoyed the task of selecting images from this amazing collection to create an exhibition to further illustrate the themes of ‘Scotland’s Coast’ ‘Industrial Scotland’ and ‘A wild land?’.

Industrial Scotland

Aerial images also show the shifting patterns of industry across Scotland, in both rural and urban environments. From above, we get unrivalled sweeping views of the vast processing plants and factories of the 20th twentieth century and the railway network.

Scotland from the Sky - industry
Scotland from the Sky - wildland

A wild land?

From the air we see how the people of Scotland have lived, worked and changed this country of ours leaving no part untouched or unaltered by human activity, shaping the landscape into the views we know and love today.

There are images in this exhibition which will be personally relevant to each visitor, whether it’s Portobello beach in the 1960s or Glasgow before the shipyards closed. My personal favourite shows Aviemore railway station in the Cairngorms in 1932. The image shows a rural landscape with only the railway station, the Cairngorm Hotel, which remains today and the Aviemore Station Hotel, which burnt down in 1950. The forerunners of the tourist industry that has come to dominate the life of this Highland town and many family memories holiday memories for me and thousands like me.

The exhibition is running at Stanley Mills until Sunday 22 September 2019, other venues tbc.

If you haven’t been before, Stanley Mills on the banks of the River Tay is worth a visit anyway. Exhibitions present insight into the lives of the mill workers – mostly women and children – in one of the world’s oldest surviving factories. Built in the 1780s, the mill complex was altered many times to keep up with the industry’s changing demands, before it finally closed in 1989.

Please note the exhibition will be held on the top floor of the Bell Mill, which is only accessible by stairs.

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A Healthy Future for Thackray Medical Museum

Breaking News: It’s great to be able to share today that Thackray Medical Museum in Leeds has been awarded £1.5m from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

I became involved in this project earlier this year and for a short time worked with the team quite intensively to create an interpretation plan for the new galleries for the application. It was a joy to work with both the Thackray and Leach Studio teams to explore the collections and stories and learning programmes of the Thackray.

I am so pleased that HLF agree we have come up with an exciting and achievable plan for the presentation of these to a wider audience and representing a greater variety of voices. The content of this museum truly is relevant to everybody and I can’t wait to see the realisation of these plans.

Thackray have also secured £1m from Wellcome towards the £3.7m project to create new programmes, exhibitions and updated visitor facilities, including a mock operating theatre, as well as essential repairs to the Grade II listed building.

ITV News Story

Thackray Medical Museum new op theatre

Thackray Medical Museum Concept Design by Leach Studio

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Science and Technology Interactives at National Museum of Scotland

Today is the public opening of the new galleries at the National Museum of Scotland: Six new Science and Technology galleries and four from the department of Art and Design.

This is the most recent phase of the Masterplan for the Victorian building on the Chambers Street site which began with the Connect gallery in 2005 and included the ‘Royal Museum Project‘ galleries which opened in 2011.

Together with two colleagues, I have been managing the interactive displays for these galleries for nearly three years. While my colleagues managed the software and film contractors, I mainly concentrated on the mechanical interactive exhibits in the Science and Technology galleries. Here are a few pics of some of the star hands-on items, gallery by gallery:

National Museum of Scotland, science and technology interactives

Energy Wheel

Explore

  • National Museum of Scotland, science and technology interactives balloons

    Hot Air Balloons

  • National Museum of Scotland, science and technology interactives lift yourself

    Lift Yourself

Making it

  • National Museum of Scotland, science and technology interactives qcfar

    Quality Control

  • National Museum of Scotland, science and technology interactives assemblyline

    Assembly Line

  • National Museum of Scotland, science and technology interactives cogs gears

    Cogs and Gears

  • National Museum of Scotland, science and technology interactives cogs gears

    Cogs and Gears

Energise

  • National Museum of Scotland, science and technology interactives energy wheel

    Energy Wheel, Energise, National Museum of Scotland

  • National Museum of Scotland, science and technology interactives wave tank

    Wave tank

  • National Museum of Scotland, science and technology interactives waterturbine

    Water Turbine, Energise, National Museum of Scotland

Enquire

  • National Museum of Scotland, science and technology interactives wimshurst

    Wimshurst Machine, Enquire, National Museum of Scotland

  • National Museum of Scotland, science and technology interactives zoetrope

    Zoetrope

  • National Museum of Scotland, science and technology interactives inside explorer

    Medical Imaging

  • National Museum of Scotland, science and technology interactives cloudchamber

    Cloud Chamber

  • National Museum of Scotland, science and technology interactives plasmaball

    Plasma Ball, Enquire, National Museum of Scotland

  • National Museum of Scotland, science and technology interactives maxwells

    Maxwell’s Wheels

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Dark Skies, Kielder

Earlier this year, I worked with Abound Design who were commissioned by Kielder Water & Forest Park Development Trust, on behalf of the Animating Dark Skies Project Partnership,  to produce indoor interpretation at their Kielder Castle and Tower Knowe Visitor Centre sites about the area’s ‘Dark Sky’ status and what that means, and to encourage visitors to the area to look at the night skies.

My role on the project involved researching astronomy content and producing exhibition text and related hands-on activities.

Light pollution was a key concept to communicate and the lack of light pollution can be a very powerful experience for city-dwellers visiting Kielder.

Something I was very keen to include in the exhibition was a large-format Planisphere. This is a map of the constellations as they appear at the night sky which rotates to line up the date and time and show would-be stargazers what to look out for.

We also included large-scale flip books telling the Myths of some of the best known constellations and showing the images they relate to alongside the actual shapes of the stars in the sky.

In this photo you can see a simple orrery we had built in order to show how and why the moon appears to change shape through the month. And, one of my favourite exhibits, two panels of touchable moon-surface 3d printed from NASA files!

Most people involved in Science Communication know NASA has a great resource of education materials, however until this year I didn’t know about their 3d printing files…. here’s the link if you’re interested – http://nasa3d.arc.nasa.gov/models/printable – these files can be printed for free by anyone with a 3d printer. Ours show the near and far sides of the moon and how these differ (the far side is very cratered whereas the nearside is smooth due to lava flows that filled the craters billions of years ago). A texture difference like this is a perfect use for a touchable model.

Kielder Water and Forest Park is a fantastic place to spend time outdoors, to learn about forestry and hydroelectric power generation, as well as ecosystems and nature. Now I’m pleased to say it’s also a great place to find out about stargazing.

Dark Skies, Kielder Castle Visitor Centre

Kielder Castle Visitor Centre

Dark Skies, Tower Knowe Visitor Centre

Tower Knowe Visitor Centre

Dark Skies, Kielder Planisphere and constellation stories

Planisphere and constellation stories

Dark Skies, Kielder Orrery and 3d printed moon surface

Orrery and 3d printed moon surface

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Royal Observatory Edinburgh visitor centre

Summer in Scotland isn’t a great time for getting a good view of the night sky… with less than seven hours of darkness, and much of that twilight. In the summer of 2014, I worked with the Royal Observatory Edinburgh Visitor Centre in the slightly quieter time over the school summer holidays to  refurbish and rebuild some of their interactive exhibits.

I had worked with Tania Johnston, Senior Public Engagement Officer at the Observatory the previous year to create couple of new exhibits in their learning space. 

A model of the James Clark Maxwell Telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii, home to the SCUBA camera developed and built at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh. 

And the nose-cone from a Skylark Rocket. Skylark rockets flew from the 1950s up to 2005 and carried experiments into space, some of which were designed at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh.

Plinths and graphic panels built/printed by Leach Colour. 

Model of James Clerk Maxwell Model
Skylark Rocket nose cone
Prism interactive exhibit

This year, Tania was keen to revamp the interactive exhibits in the telescope dome. These exhibits had been in place for around 20 years (maybe longer!) and were the surviving three that remained popular with both staff and visitors from a slightly larger selection installed in the 1990s.

The challenge was to re-design and re-build them to keep all the aspects that had worked so well for so long, but to refresh the text and graphics and give them a more modern finish.

Relatively local company FifeX took care of the exhibit build while graphic design was by Chris Peters who designed the graphics for last years’ exhibits. The Observatory staff are very pleased with the outcome, hopefully the first school group to use them this week will agree.

  • Observatory interactives roe light wide

    Reflection and refraction

  • Observatory interactives roe spectros graphic

    Spectrum exhibit

  • Observatory interactives roe prism close

    Bending light

  • Observatory interactives roe prism wide

    Prism exhibit

  • Observatory interactives roe spectros glowing

    Nitrogen spectrum

  • Observatory interactives roe wide

    The telescope

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Energy Lab

I am very excited to announce that the Energy Lab at the National Mining Museum Scotland is almost ready to launch!

You can read about the origins of the project in this blog post. Since I wrote that in May, we have been very busy working with our designers and fabricators; Leach Colour to create the exhibits for the space.

Roger Meachem of Yet Science CIC has worked hard with the museum staff on a supporting teachers’ resource full of pre- and post-visit activities about energy and engineering challenges. And Ryan Sturrock of Walk the Line Productions has filmed presenter Emily Carr demonstrating some of these activities for the supporting dvd and YouTube clips.

National Mining Museum, Scotland Energy lab exterior

The Energy Lab

National Mining Museum, Scotland Energy lab

Introduction

We have collected objects, photographs and film footage donated kindly by Professor Stephen Salter, the University of Edinburgh, Jamie Taylor, Artemis Intelligent Power and Pelamis Wave Power.

And we have welcomed teachers and p6/7 pupils from three local schools to try out the activities, interactives and teachers’ pack.

National Mining Museum, Scotland

Generating Electricity and Energy Changes exhibits

National Mining Museum, Scotland wave energy

Wave Energy interactive

National Mining Museum, Scotland the duck

Salter’s Duck display

All that’s left to do is a little bit of final snagging before we welcome Fiona Hyslop, Scottish Government Minister for Culture and External Affairs to open the space formally on 1st October. Then we’ll get our teachers’ pack and film clips live on the museum website and compile our post-project evaluation report for our funders, the Royal Academy of Engineering.

Let’s hope that the Energy Lab can help inspire some of the children of the coal-mining areas of Midlothian to turn their creative problem-solving energy towards engineering a sustainable energy future for us all!

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Engineering Scotland’s energy future

What do you get if you mix some of Scotland’s pioneers in the field of renewable energy with teachers passionate about primary school learning at a mining museum in one of the finest surviving examples of a Victorian colliery?

The answer is – Engineering Scotland’s energy future – a project funded by the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Ingenious grant scheme to create a new and unique space at the National Mining Museum Scotland dedicated to engaging primary school children with innovative engineering solutions for Scotland’s energy future.

The Museum has acquired the ‘temporary’ hut where wave energy research began at Edinburgh University and a number of related artefacts.

National Mining Museum Scotland, Newtongrange

National Mining Museum Scotland, Newtongrange

National Mining Museum Scotland, Wave power hut before refurbishment

Wave power hut before refurbishment

We are going to be working hard this summer to turn the workshop space into a hive of active hands-on learning for primary 7 pupils, who will be inspired by a display of wave power artefacts and related interactive exhibits to engage in engineering activities that will develop creative thinking, problem solving and team working skills all in the context of Scotland’s energy future.

The project is being shaped and developed in a truly collaborative way with engineers who worked in the wave power unit coming together with museum professionals, working teachers and active learning specialists. Last week’s focus group session worked on developing the full brief for the space in order to help our design and fabrication team, Leach Colour, to start their work and we’re very excited about the potential impact this space could have.

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InMotion : Edinburgh Science Festival 2012

One of my very first jobs as a freelancer was project managing the temporary exhibition InMotion for the Edinburgh Science Festival. 

I worked with the Festival staff from December 2011 to help them turn their creative ideas into real physical exhibits. I brought suitable designers on-board (Stuart Kerr and Chris Peters), and the exhibit build company (FifeX). I worked with all the exhibition partners, keeping to a challenging budget, and getting all the elements into position for the big day. It was a challenging but really fun project.

Finally, after a lot of hard work from everybody, the exhibition ‘boxes’ were delivered to the Museum after closing on Wednesday night, set up and then wrapped up in big ribbons and bows until the opening party on Thursday night.

Everyday from 30 March until the 15 April, InMotion took pride of place in the Grand Gallery at the National Museum of Scotland, allowing visitors to discover the science of human movement through a series of workshops, performances and interactive exhibits.

  • InMotion : Edinburgh International Science Festival 2012

  • InMotion : Edinburgh International Science Festival 2012

  • InMotion : Edinburgh International Science Festival 2012

InMotion was quite unique in that it was part festival, part exhibition, part workshop and part performance space. An exhibition run by a science festival is quite different to any other exhibition; the exhibits were designed not only to be highly interactive but also to have quite a high level of facilitation from the science festival’s fantastic team of ‘science communicators’.

You can see the communicators in blue t-shirts in many of these photos, but what you can’t see in a photo is the sheer energy and enthusiasm they brought to the activities. All day every day the team engaged with visitors who flocked to the museum during a rainy Easter break in numbers that rivaled those seen in the first month after the re-opening.

The team tirelessly engaged, enthused, explained, encouraged and inspired and their contribution to the successful visitor experience should not be underestimated.

Copyright: Robyn Braham / Edinburgh Science Festival

Copyright: Robyn Braham / Edinburgh Science Festival
  • Copyright: Isabel Buenz / Edinburgh Science Festival

    Copyright: Isabel Buenz / Edinburgh Science Festival

  • Copyright: Isabel Buenz / Edinburgh Science Festival

    Copyright: Isabel Buenz / Edinburgh Science Festival

  • Copyright: Isabel Buenz / Edinburgh Science Festival

    Copyright: Isabel Buenz / Edinburgh Science Festival

  • Copyright: Robyn Braham / Edinburgh Science Festival

    Copyright: Robyn Braham / Edinburgh Science Festival

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