Digital | Making tech work at Salisbury Museum

When we started working with young people on a project to redisplay our fashion collection at the Salisbury Museum, we were keen to include a digital element. Initial plans were created with local college students and a company specialising in digital for museums. These included a paper trail/online crossover.

But as we were about to start in March 2020, everything had to be put on hold. Wanting to keep in touch with our team, we set up a blog using a free online platform. We were surprised and encouraged by the contributions. The voices, personalities and interests of the young people and volunteers, as well as their passion for the project, clearly came through.

On our return, it was unfortunately obvious that we wouldn’t be able to go ahead with our original idea. We wanted to share the blog more widely and decided to use the articles as content for our digital offer, linking them to key objects in the gallery using QR codes. This worked well.

We are incorporating digital from the offset for a fashion project we have started, and will develop it alongside our project team. Rather than start from scratch, we are repurposing and tailoring our existing digital offer, while leaving the original content accessible. Flexibility and the use of online tools have proved a successful digital approach for us.

Katy England is a project manager at the Salisbury Museum