Community
Work to bring the stories of Southland to life at Te Unua Museum of Southland has entered a major new stage, with the project now moving into the production and build phase of the museum experience fit-out.
Museum of Southland Team Leader Experience David Dudfield said the current stage of the project centred on production, fabrication, and installation work.
“Sharing the stories of a region – it’s people, its places – is a really complex and multi-layered process, and it requires a huge collaborative effort between Gibson International, our own museum and heritage services team, and a variety of locals – from subject-matter experts, to artists and designers, and manufacturers and fabricators,” he said.
“The spiderweb of people playing a role in the transition of Museum of Southland , as it moves from a vision into something tangible and real, is enormous – and the end result is going to be really dynamic and reflective of our region because of that.”
The experience at Museum of Southland will be contemporary and driven by storytelling, combining traditional museum displays with innovative techniques designed to engage all the senses.
“Visitors to Museum of Southland will come across objects they know and love from the past – for instance, both the figurehead from the barque England’s Glory and the Fresnel lens from the Waipapa Point Lighthouse will be integrated into the museum experience,” Dudfield said.
“Both of those collection items will be familiar to people who visited the former Southland Museum and Art Gallery, but they can expect the stories they unlock to be told in new and exciting ways at Museum of Southland. They’re both not only really striking visually, but there’s also a nice connection between the stories of shipwrecks and lighthouses with the voyaging narratives that will be woven throughout Museum of Southland,” he said.
The permanent exhibition experience is being developed by Gibson International, which previously led the design concept phase and has now been awarded the build contract.
Gibson International Co-owner and Creative Producer Brett Tompkins said strong local input was essential when creating authentic visitor experiences.
“This has been led, in large part, by the museum team as they are the connector into the community, and will continue to be so long after we have completed our work. It’s really vital to make sure the experience is not only authentic, but representative as well,” he said.
Tompkins said experience development at museums such as Museum of Southland required contributions from specialists across many creative disciplines.
“We are not creating a building. Our responsibility is to weave together the story of Southland, and give visitors the opportunity to engage in physical, aural, visual, and interactive spaces,” he said.
One example of the interactive approach planned for the museum includes a display that reacts to visitors in real time. As people move through the space, projections and surround sound will respond to their presence, creating an immersive environment that changes with each interaction.
“It’s a huge body of work, and it all has to be developed with the knowledge that we have to cater for a really broad and diverse range of visitors, who all have different expectations, abilities, and attention spans,” Tompkins said.
“I’m really looking forward to seeing some of those large-scale immersive displays in action. Nowadays, we consume so much through the tiny screens of our mobile phones. I want to see strangers standing side-by-side and actually sharing an experience together,” he said.
Tompkins said the chance to help create an entirely new museum experience from the ground up was rare.
“The opportunity to create an entire museum experience from scratch is incredibly rare – especially in New Zealand. It’s a huge responsbility we don’t take lightly,” he said.
Museum of Southland Director Eloise Wallace said continuing to work with Gibson International during the build phase would ensure strong continuity across the project.
“The regional heritage collections and our shared stories make up the foundation of the experience at Museum of Southland , and the team at Gibson had built up a huge store of knowledge throughout their work with us in the design phase,” she said.
“Continuing our partnership as we move into the next phase means we can really hit the ground running across all the production elements of the museum experience.”
Wallace said the project had reached an exciting point, where months of planning and design work were beginning to take physical form.
“Being able to partner with them as we moved into the actual build of the experience meant the design and development workstreams could continue in tandem, and we’ve really been able to hit the ground running,” she said.
The detailed design for the museum experience is scheduled to be finalised at the end of March, with production work continuing throughout the year as the museum moves closer to opening.