Manchester Museum

The Challenge

Manchester Museum received funding to update their Animal Life exhibition in a bid to increase Manchester’s offer as a visitor destination. The original gallery was out-of-date and provided a very one dimensional visitor experience, emphasizing the separation between people and nature. Manchester’s vision was to provide a more dynamic space that connected people to the subject and creates an opportunity to interrogate the subject matter through personal experience. The challenge was to create an inspirational space where visitors can learn, explore and interrogate the subject matter in more detail, and to connect what people did in the museum with what they did after their visit. The gallery needed to deliver messages around the idea of ‘sustainable planet’ but that were engaging, fun and relevant way.

Our Solution

Manchester worked with top fashion events agency villa eugénie to help deliver their vision. Villa eugénie, in turn, commissioned Mubaloo to develop an App to help bring the gallery to life and enable it to be flexible, future proof and interactive. Working together with Manchester Museum and villa eugénie, Mubaloo developed an App, Living Worlds, for both iOS and Android smartphones and tablets, which can be downloaded for free on both platforms. The experiential app uses media-rich guides to enhance the exhibit information and allow visitors to learn more about the key themes and messages. The App itself integrates with the museum’s collection management system, which means that all the data in the App is live and can be updated within minutes. Visitors will have access to up-to-date, detailed information about individual objects in the case in front of them, including images of the living animals in their own habitat, through the Arkive website. The App also showcases videos of scientists and animal experts talking about the themes and messages, and helps visitors to find out how they can get involved and find out more.

Conclusion

This project is one of a kind and combines the experience and skills of the UK’S largest university museum, top fashion events agency villa eugénie and the UK’s largest App developer, Mubaloo.

Client Testimonial

We wanted Living Worlds to be a new type of natural history gallery for the 21st century, that went beyond describing and classifying the natural world to one that engages people with the wonder and mystery of nature for the benefit of their own well-being and the environment. Working with Mubaloo and App technology meant that we could combine collections management, exhibitions and public engagement in a really neat way, delivering this vision for our visitors and for other App users.” Henry McGhie, Head of Collections and Curator of Zoology