Museums and Heritage Show 2013


F A I T H

Last week, Rosa and I headed South for 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, which involved 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 appointment. Needless to say, D I S C O U R S E made full use of everything on offer. Aside from developing some really valuable contacts, we also learnt about many established companies - some of which we'd never before come across - 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 Rosa and I were the visually rich new methods of display and exhibition; in particular Holovista's beautiful 3D artefact display alongwith Colour Holographic's unbelieveablly realistic holographic representations of precious objects and materials. 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) fascinated D I S C O U R S E with their beautifully culturally considered projects that demonstrated extremely strong aesthetic and interactive intent.

Although the show was quite small, it was a pleasure to be part of such a talented community of creative professionals - all of whom we'd really love to work with in the future. Conversation was consistently engaging, and as a result we've both got pages of notes that we'd like to investigate further via D I S C O U R S E blog and projects. In the mean time, thanks to all who helped play a part in the show, as well as supporting D I S C O U R S E in these early stages of its development. We hope to hear from you!


1 comment:

  1. A well written comprehensive review. Thank you for the mention.

    ReplyDelete