MA Narrative Environments Major Project at Central Saint Martins (UAL)
Creative Direction, Research, Writing, Design, Project Management
2020- 2021
Location: Rotherhithe
Stakeholder: Brunel Museum
Website: Walking Brunel
Instagram: @walking_brunel
Article: The Londonist
WALKING BRUNEL
Borderless Museums
Borderless Museums reconceives exhibition design by encouraging local museums to take the stories held within their walls out into the surrounding area. Rather than the local community having to come to the museum, an institution from which they may feel excluded, the exhibition becomes a transmedia narrative that takes place on the streets with which they are familiar.
Within this frame, Walking Brunel takes the Brunel Museum’s ‘Fair under the Tunnel’ narrative onto the streets of Rotherhithe, south London, transforming it into a 15-minute audio-guided walk. It includes an immersive experience in the form of a podcast with augmented reality, following a trail from Canada Water through the Albion Channel to the Brunel Museum plateau. The participants arrive at an installation at the end of the walk.
The aim is to make local museums more inclusive and their collections more accessible and relevant to the neighboring communities.
The project includes an immersive experience in the form of a podcast with augmented reality, following a trail from Canada Water through the Albion Channel to the Brunel Museum plateau.
The participants arrive at an installation at the end of the walk.
AWARDS:
Steve Lumby Drawing Prize: article (won)
MullenLowe NOVA Award (nominated)
COLLABORATORS:
Photography: Yingshuang (Alessia) Yu
Graphic Design Consultant: Francesca Coppola
Sound Design: Alex Collinson (website)
Writing: Weronika Tokaj
Film: Chao Zuo
Film Production: Silvano Todorovic
Making and Installation: Chao Zuo
Installation: Shona Brannan
Creative Direction & Branding Consultant: Kriti Agarwal (LinkedIn)
Visitor Experience
Go through the visitor experience of the Walking Brunel opening event at the Brunel Museum (30.05.2021)
Pictures from the opening event
Visitors standing at one of the stops along the audio-guided walk. They scan the QR code to listen to the story and see the corresponding visuals.
Details from the installation (peep-show) in front of the Brunel Museum.
Map and stories of the area the visitors use during their audio-guided walk.
Details from the opening day, visitors talking with the museum staff.
Storyboard
Project storyboard video depicting the visitor experience.
Diagram showing what was done during the project
Audio-guide route, chapters and timing
Narrative diagram depicting the stories told within each chapter of the audio-guide
Visual language and installation (peep-show) art and collages
Installation (peep-show) construction details
Installation (peep-show) model rendering
Drawings depicting the installation (peep-show) in front of The Brunel Museum
Pictures from the opening day of the project
CONCLUSION
The project is rooted in questioning the way museums portray their story to the public. The inspiration came from the fact that museums are evolving beyond traditional storytelling within the building. Every museum is different, with its unique stories, opportunities, and challenges. The project challenges traditional exhibitions in museums by adding a contemporary twist to the narrative and regenerating the way museums portray their story to the public.
One of the challenges for small museums is to make them accessible, therefore the project creates a necessary platform for the encounter between the small museum and local residents.
Interventions within ‘Borderless Museum’ shall be at the same time different from a contemporary design but also fit the story of the museum it is cooperating with. Those experiences should complement rather than compete with the museum.
Collaborating with the Brunel Museum has taught me how to work with small museums, and how to identify what the project should look like for different museums.
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
As Walking Brunel is part of the umbrella network called Borderless Museums, this project is being treated as the first of many. The idea is to keep contacting small museums in order to show them why the Borderless Museums approach is important for them. Walking Brunel is part of the bigger context- the beginning of a network of projects that will link multiple small museums across London, and hopefully spread to other cities.
The museum has found other uses for the installation as well (within the children's workshops that they host), this means that the project has evolved beyond initial thoughts.
The project was intended for a specific audience, but the fact the museum found ways to engage different audiences as well shows how the project is versatile and how it will keep changing the way it functions within the museum.