A multi-sensory exhibit has been revealed at a Lake District museum.
Keswick Museum is one of 10 partners of The Sensational Museum project to create sensory exhibits that are accessible to all.
Visitors are encouraged to touch, listen, and smell the exhibit, called Crafting the landscape: the journey of a piece of KSIA.
It was created with a pan-disabled group, and has been designed to be interacted with. Everyone in the co-creation group has lived experience of disability.
The group worked with curators at the museum and designers from Barker Langham to create something that would communicate a narrative about the work of the Keswick School of Industrial Arts in a multi-sensory way.
The installation tells the story of the creation of a piece of decorative art from the KSIA. Visitors can touch a wooden laser-cut map of Keswick and the Borrowdale Valley to understand the geography of the area where copper was mined in Elizabethan times, inspiring its use by the KSIA.
Stations around the map encourage people to touch and smell moss and copper nuggets, hammer a metal sheet, and touch a real object from the museum’s KSIA collection.
Further interpretation is available through audio description, Braille, and QR codes.
Curator Nicola Lawson said: “Being part of The Sensational Museum project has been transformative. We at the museum have learnt so much from the team and our wonderful co-creators. We hope that visitors will enjoy a chance to touch the objects and think differently about how museums can tell stories.”
Keswick Museum will be running quiet openings for disabled and neurodivergent people who want to experience the installation in a quieter environment.
These are expected to be alternate Friday mornings through August and September.
Crafting the landscape: the journey of a piece of KSIA will be on display until the autumn.
