There are plenty of railway museums around the world. So, what’s special about this one? Putting things in terms of a 'brand differentiation statement’ gives us a sense of what’s special – ‘Only the UK’s National Railway Museum can rightfully claim “it all started here” and, with curatorial authority supported by an unparalleled collection, present the big stories of the national and global impact of the railways – from their genesis to today, and looking ahead to the future.’

Our focus was the Great Hall, the vision for which was to tell ‘the epic story of railways and how they fundamentally changed the world in which we live, from the time they took off in the Industrial Revolution to the creation of the global rail network’ – ‘a huge story of big dreams and ambitious projects, but behind it lie thousands of personal contributions driven by persistence, ingenuity and creativity as well as triumphs and failures.’

I was responsible for running a series of content workshops and, as I’ve done on numerous projects, ‘bridging’ the interpretation and design work. I devised a ‘visitor experience driver’ framework which aimed to very simply capture the relationship between the Great Hall’s proposition and that of other areas of the Museum – the intent being that this would act as both clarification of remit up front and also a sense-check for the team going forward.

‘Putting the vehicles in their place’

I’m a stickler for joined-up thinking, making sure that content and design ‘stacks up’ with the bigger picture of what the Museum wants to achieve and what people want from a museum visit. Anyone who has ever visited the National Railway Museum will inevitably recall the primacy of the vehicles. The challenge, as one of the client team succinctly put it, was to “put the vehicles in their place”. The focus of stories for the Great Hall was to be on the impact of the railways rather than the railways or vehicles, with a balance of the social history and STEM. The design ideas needed to address this rebalance while improving accessibility, and creating something more emotional and immersive.

Large museum ‘masterplan’ projects for National Lottery Heritage Fund (NLHF) bids are intensive endeavours. Even if a client has a team leading on the content side of things there’s always work involved in reaching a consensus on interpretation work and content edits before a creative brief can meaningfully materialise for the design work.

Following this project, I also worked with Real Studios to lead similar NLHF-bid projects for Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and York Castle Museum.