1 / 36

Henry McGhie, Head of Collections and Curator of Zoology, The Manchester Museum

Living Worlds: a responsive natural history gallery. Henry McGhie, Head of Collections and Curator of Zoology, The Manchester Museum. The Manchester Museum. Largest university museum in UK Engaging visitors with research and debates Leading regional museum

bianca
Download Presentation

Henry McGhie, Head of Collections and Curator of Zoology, The Manchester Museum

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Living Worlds: a responsive natural history gallery Henry McGhie, Head of Collections and Curator of Zoology, The Manchester Museum

  2. The Manchester Museum • Largest university museum in UK • Engaging visitors with research and debates • Leading regional museum • Natural sciences and humanities collections • Long history of projects engaging people with collections and ideas: DCF projects, Collective Conversations, Hermit project • 350,000 visitors each year,40,000 visits in organised schools groups • Most visitors non-specialists from local area

  3. Manchester Museum collections

  4. Long history of computer documentation projects • Most collections covered in some way, with 591,600 catalogue records (some covering groups of items), over 90% of collection covered in some way • Strategic approach to documentation • 99,000 multimedia records, 10,000 narratives

  5. Diagrams for the layout of The Manchester Museum, TH Huxley 1868

  6. Promotingunderstandingbetweencultures and workingtowards a sustainable world

  7. ’Old’ gallery • Opened 1891 • Redisplayed about 3 times since then • All about ’Mammals’ • Taxonomic, very neutral, ’separate’ from outside world

  8. New gallery • Aboutthenatural world and people’srelationshipswith it • Self-containedinstallationson range of themes • Encouragespeople to think-ratherthan telling themwhattheyshouldthink • Givespeopleoptions and choicesthattheycandecide to take forward, or not • Connectswithoutside world and withpeople’severyday lives • What visitors do next is just as important as whatthey do whentheyare in the museum

  9. ’Living Worlds’ • Positive, uplifting- not doom and gloom • Connects with living world • Not entirely honest to talk about ’life’ in museum without making this connection • That planet made up of different habitats and peopleuse nature in differerntways • And thatpeopleseethings in differentways

  10. Museum • villa eugénie, Brussels- designers • Mubaloo, Bristol- leading smartphone app developers • Ke Emu • ARKive

  11. Living worlds app • Free- ‘living worlds’ • Developed for i-pad, i-phone, Samsung Galaxy tablet, android smart phone • Big, so can’t be downloaded through 3G- needs to be connected to wifi • Uses free superfast wifi in gallery • Images of cases, detailed information, links to short films, sign-posts visitors towards things to do next- either to ‘find out more’ or to ‘get involved’

  12. Key features • Connected documentation work with gallery work • Found mechanism for sustainable information development and delivery • HLF funded ’nature and me’ project currently underway, to develop films linked to gallery • Content of app to be further developed through ongoing use of Ke Emu • Four out of ten visitors more likely to get involved with nature related activities as a direct result of the gallery

More Related