Throughout my career I’ve been lucky to have been involved in the experience design of quite some cultural experiences like museums, festivals and cultural neighborhoods. What I thoroughly enjoyed about these projects is the interesting mix of urban design and experience design, in a context of community engagement, celebration of cultural heritage, placemaking and social innovation.
Right now I’m working with museum Prinsenhof in Delft to optimize their visitor journey in the context of the large renovation of the ancient monastery dating back to approximately 1400 AD. What makes this collaboration interesting is that we are approaching the challenge on a number of levels that all interplay and work together to create a unique sense of place:
There is the amazingly beautiful but rather complex building itself with all its limitations and opportunities. Then there is the vision of the museum and the narrative they wish to convey. Then there is the collection, both permanent and temporary, both historical and contemporary. And finally there is the widely varied audience ranging from internationally renowned scholars to neighboring residents, school kids to tourists, Dutch elderly museum veterans to Chinese backpacking first time visitors.
The challenge then becomes two-fold:
1. How can we convey the narrative, for all possible audiences, letting the collection and the building speak, while creating a memorable, smooth visitor journey catering to the varied visitor drivers that research has provided us with.
2. How can we help the city of Delft create a unique magnet for urban vibrancy, footfall and social engagement, that expands beyond the old brick walls of the museum and the traditional museum demographic.
I believe culture binds people together and I believe museums are the physical embodiment of the celebration of culture. Museums and cultural institutions have the ability to gather people together beyond ethnic, religious, social and educational divides. This potential may be a city’s greatest asset: to bring together, to bridge differences, to connect, to engage beyond social bubbles.
But that requires an approach that looks at the museum experience holistically: from an urban development perspective as well as an experience design perspective. From the very personal interaction between a visitor and a painting, to the socially very complex relationship between a city, its history and future, its citizens and its visitors. It’s about what happens in the museum as well as what happens around it.
This requires museums to embrace new disciplines in their experience design: citizen engagement, neighborhood development, mobility and infrastructure, social development, sustainable urbanism, programming and placemaking, education, city branding, and the development of public space.
And that’s why I love helping them. To be continued! 🙂