Last week, my friend Faith and I attended the annual Museums and Heritage Show at Olympia in London. Held over two days, the conference offered talks and presentations covering all aspects of the running and development of museums and galleries. Learning, engaging audiences, visitor insight, collections management, new technology, retail and trading and exhibition design all featured as areas of discourse, involving a huge variety of industry professionals. Amongst the interactive presentations were stands in which relevent creative service companies were exhibiting; as well as workshop stations such as Intranet Future's social media lab and Culture Label's increased income appointments. Aside from developing some really valuable contacts, we also learnt about many established companies - who all contributed to the museums and heritage industry in a variety of ways.
Throughout the entire conference, technology was (unsurprisingly) a firm theme in all areas of industry discussion. Most interesting to Faith and I were the visually rich new methods of display and exhibition; in particular Holovista's beautiful 3D television artefact display alongwith Colour Holographic's unbelieveablly realistic representations of precious objects and materials - offering a new NON-digital option for the display of fragile objects by hollographic reproduction. Yet amongst such eye-catching products and stands, other impressive industry gems were present. The services provided by companies like Bright White (a 2D and 3D integrated design consultancy based in York) and Paragon Creative (an exhibition design company also based in York) were fascinating, carrying out culturally considered projects with aesthetic and interactive intent. Additional to these stands, there was a programme of free talks, led by industry professionals. My two favourites were: 'Evaluating a new dimension - Audience Research for the Tanks at Tate Modern', delivered by Sabine Kolher (Audience insight and Research Manager at Tate), discussing how the the Tanks as a space for live art impacted/changed Tate's methods of Audience Research; and 'Experience Design: Creating compelling multimedia visitor experiences', delivered by Jessica Taylor (Global Head of Digital Media, Antenna) and Giles Pooley (Experience Designer, Antenna) where we were given an insight into the processes and aims of 'Experience Design'.
Although the show was quite small, it was a great to be part of such a talented community of creative professionals - all of whom we'd really love to work with & learn from in the future. Conversation was consistently engaging, and as a result we've both got pages of notes. It was such a great way to put all the university learning we have done this year into a wider context! The M+H Show is an annual event and completley free (if you sign up). This time next year, it would be great for a big parade of us HAMS students to take advantage of all the information and contacts the show has to offer.
Good suggestion about a HAMS group attending next year - it would be worth looking at timing and how it would fit with exams etc.
ReplyDeleteAlso, the issue about technology provokes thinking about how much we attend to this; especially as something which is surely changing the nature of what is possible within both the space of display and the space of memory. (Facebook as historical evidence etc...)
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteYes thats a good point, I was fortunate it didn't clash so fingers crossed for next year also. & Re: digital - this is exactly what was most interesting! Sabine Kolher was also taking about use of technology before and after a viewing experience and all the different implications this has on how people respond to exhibits. Really interesting, I hope to look at this in my Dissertation next semester.
Delete