Causing disruption to shape bolder futures
Photos © Sam Patton
How do you adapt to changing audience needs? It’s a challenge for most organisations. We notice it particularly with the museums and cultural organisations we work with, as they strive to stay relevant in the face of dramatically evolving visitor expectations.
For our recent project with Ulster Museum we created a summer of disruption. Over three months, we prototyped new ways for the museum to engage Belfast’s diverse residents in shaping its future – advancing its mission to be a symbol of social cohesion in a city with deep historical divisions.
We deployed our three Designing for Disruption principles: centring people and their voices to ensure authenticity; creating playful interventions to capture attention and opinion; and enabling everyone involved to challenge the status quo. These design principles stem from our Mindsets for Museums of the Future report, in which we advocate for museums to do “more of their thinking in public” and become shared sites for public debate, connection and reflection, with a shift in power from being "for the people" to being "of the people".
These principles can be deployed by any organisation looking to prototype new ways of being and doing. Here’s how we did it at Ulster Museum:
Photos © Sam Patton & Johnny Frazer
1. Centring authentic voices and attitudes
When prototyping a new approach, it’s essential to centre your users every step of the way to ensure a valuable outcome.
We ran in-depth workshops involving local residents and museum staff to ensure their thoughts and opinions were the driving force behind our decision-making. This co-creation process resulted in the overall concept of the project, which we called ‘Bout Ye?’ – that’s Northern Irish for ‘how are you?’. It embodied an accessible, informal tone to be used across the museum and social media that was distinctly different from the institution’s usual voice. Through ‘Bout Ye?’, the museum struck up a colloquial conversation with its audience – asking who they are, how they are and finding out what’s important in their lives.
We combined that friendly tone with a focus on storytelling, highlighting the lives of five community partners – Eoin, Caolan, Leo, Marie Therese and Maureen – by featuring their stories throughout the museum and running a photo campaign with their portraits shot at meaningful locations, each holding a cut-out of an item from the museum collection that holds a personal resonance. This lent an authentic and welcoming voice to the campaign and ensured it was grounded in the diversity and lived experience of real people.
Photo © Johnny Frazer
2. Sparking curiosity to drive engagement
Creativity that interrupts the everyday helps draw the audience in and facilitate opinion-gathering.
Have you ever wanted to disturb the silence in a hushed gallery, or disrupt the pristine walls? That’s what we invited Ulster’s visitors to do! People were encouraged to write new ideas on the walls and display cases; use the front windows to choreograph dance moves; take selfies with museum props in a mirror; and record their memories, stories and suggestions in a phone booth.
Our playful, sensory interventions purposefully contrasted with the museum’s more formal approach to display and interpretation, helping to challenge visitor expectations about what museums are for, and what they can be.
The disruptive ‘Bout Ye?’ prototype was extended into event programming, resulting in the museum’s most popular evening event ever, attended by thousands of guests who queued around the block for food, music and even the chance to get their favourite museum object inked onto their body by tattoo artists.
Photo © Alex Johnson
3. Disrupting the status quo
Breaking down established norms is a key catalyst for innovation and change.
The theme of disruption extended beyond the ‘Bout Ye?’ tone and installations in the museum’s public spaces to behind the scenes, where we sensitively challenged the museum’s established practices. This strand of work was less visible, but equally vital.
As an outside party, our creative team was able to facilitate meaningful exploration and discussion amongst management and museum staff, creating the space for everyone’s voices to be heard and new ideas to be formed.
The ‘Bout Ye?’ prototype has helped Ulster Museum formulate a bold new strategy that directly responds to the views and experience of its community, demonstrating its relevance and importance for the future.
"'Bout Ye?’ has been playfully disruptive and eye-catching and it’s been a really good way to encourage insights from our visitors. It’s been challenging perceptions about what and who our museums are for and helping people to have their say.”
– Hannah Crowdy, Head of Curatorial for National Museums NI
Photo © Johnny Frazer