National Waterfront Museum, Swansea
John Millard, talking about the World Museum Liverpool at the Museums Association conference in October last year, identified two types of new museums: the palace and the shopping mall.
The National Waterfront Museum in Swansea offers a third: the fast food joint, where visitors, rather than working their way through a three-course meal, are encouraged to snack and graze, selecting from a vast digital menu.
The National Waterfront Museum, which opened in October 2005, has been designed as a showcase for Wales's industrial heritage and is the most recent addition to Amgueddfa Cymru (National Museum Wales), which has six other museums.
The waterfront museum grew out of a partnership between National Museum Wales and the City and County of Swansea, the first time that a national museum has entered into a partnership with a local authority.
Significant financial support came from the Welsh Assembly, the Welsh Development Agency, the Wales Tourist Board and the Heritage Lottery Fund. The nature of this list of funders makes it clear that regeneration is one of the key aims.
The museum is housed in a Victorian warehouse, the home of the old Swansea Maritime and Industrial Museum. This has been skillfully enlarged by the architect Wilkinson Eyre to more than double the size with a glass, steel and slate extension that utilises local materials.
The building forms a bridge between the city and the marina basin, the focus of Swansea's new maritime quarter. The two wings of the new and the old building are linked by a glazed 'street', flanked by two open-air courtyard spaces.
Historic ships are berthed alongside the museum in the marina, and nearby are bars, cafes and shops. Clearly this is going to be the place to hang out in Swansea in the summer.
The 'street' is also the introductory space to the museum. Visitors orientate themselves with the aid of 'Wayfinders', large audiovisual units that act as an introduction to the museum and allow visitors to make their own selection from the menu of 15 themed exhibition spaces. This space works very well and is accessible in every sense of the word.
The National Waterfront Museum, the architect, and the designer, Land Design Studio, have positively embraced the need to comply with the Disability Discrimination Act. In addition to physical access, the screens include interpretation by virtual BSL signers - tactile maps and braille labels are to be added shortly.
A hundred years ago Wales was an industrial giant and this story is told through themes that focus on people, home, work and industry. Perhaps inevitably in a country where intangible heritage - storytelling, poetry, music and song - is so embedded in daily life, it is the people, not the objects, who are the stars.
One of the curiosities of the National Waterfront Museum is that although it is rich in objects, with showcases in each themed exhibition area and large pieces of machinery, they effectively become wallpaper, since visitors appear to prefer to engage with the digital media.
This technology is striking and innovative throughout, making use of digital interface screens and responsive surfaces that bring drama to the story. The interpretation draws on a vast resource of images and oral history, often to brilliant effect.
Using data from the 1851 census, visitors can take a virtual trip through the streets of Victorian Swansea and enter the houses of real people; a virtual supermarket conveyor belt allows the visitor to fill a shopping basket and, in the process, learn about the diet and the budget of miners and their families.
Many of the oral histories are memorable, and testify to the eloquence the Welsh call 'hwyl'. An ex-miner, who started work in 1927, reminisces about the days when there was no health and safety and no canteen to see you through long shifts; a young entrepreneur compares his working life with that of his grandfather, who spent his life at the coalface.
But digital media has its limitations. It cannot convey the 'shock and awe' of a steel mill in action, or the claustrophobia of a coalmine. Nor do all age groups find it engaging. On a mid-week visit, the first interactive, a giant panorama of Swansea, was crowded with elderly people anxiously hovering over the screens, reluctant to touch them.
During peak times, the fact that only a limited number of visitors can actually control their interaction with the digital media, the majority having to watch what other visitors want to see, will cause frustration.
It also has the effect of distancing the visitor from the story. Though the website promises that 'you can be plunged into poverty, wallow in wealth, dabble with danger or even risk your health!', I felt detached from the story.
Unlike the Big Pit up the road, which is fired by the passion of former miners, the predominance of digital media at the National Waterfront Museum makes sure that you are always an observer, never a participant.
Free admission means that visitors are encouraged to visit frequently, however, and multiple layers of information will allow you to follow a different route each time.
You won't leave with an in-depth knowledge of the industrial history of Wales, but it would be impossible not to come away with your mind full of a host of personal tales and powerful images that offer fascinating glimpses into an industrial past that has virtually disappeared.
The story of the miners' wives taking their Sunday best clothes and shoes to the pawnbrokers on a Monday and redeeming them on a Friday, to get them through the week, will stay with me.
Jane Weeks is a museum consultant
Project data
Cost: £33.5m
Main funders: Heritage Lottery Fund: £11m, Welsh Assembly: £5.75m, European Union Objective 1 Funding: £3.7m, Welsh Development Agency: £2.75m, NMW £4.5m, City and County of Swansea £3.75m
Architect: Wilkinson Eyre
Designer: Land Design Studio
Software design and production consultant: Newangle
John Millard, talking about the World Museum Liverpool at the Museums Association conference in October last year, identified two types of new museums: the palace and the shopping mall.
The National Waterfront Museum in Swansea offers a third: the fast food joint, where visitors, rather than working their way through a three-course meal, are encouraged to snack and graze, selecting from a vast digital menu.
The National Waterfront Museum, which opened in October 2005, has been designed as a showcase for Wales's industrial heritage and is the most recent addition to Amgueddfa Cymru (National Museum Wales), which has six other museums.
The waterfront museum grew out of a partnership between National Museum Wales and the City and County of Swansea, the first time that a national museum has entered into a partnership with a local authority.
Significant financial support came from the Welsh Assembly, the Welsh Development Agency, the Wales Tourist Board and the Heritage Lottery Fund. The nature of this list of funders makes it clear that regeneration is one of the key aims.
The museum is housed in a Victorian warehouse, the home of the old Swansea Maritime and Industrial Museum. This has been skillfully enlarged by the architect Wilkinson Eyre to more than double the size with a glass, steel and slate extension that utilises local materials.
The building forms a bridge between the city and the marina basin, the focus of Swansea's new maritime quarter. The two wings of the new and the old building are linked by a glazed 'street', flanked by two open-air courtyard spaces.
Historic ships are berthed alongside the museum in the marina, and nearby are bars, cafes and shops. Clearly this is going to be the place to hang out in Swansea in the summer.
The 'street' is also the introductory space to the museum. Visitors orientate themselves with the aid of 'Wayfinders', large audiovisual units that act as an introduction to the museum and allow visitors to make their own selection from the menu of 15 themed exhibition spaces. This space works very well and is accessible in every sense of the word.
The National Waterfront Museum, the architect, and the designer, Land Design Studio, have positively embraced the need to comply with the Disability Discrimination Act. In addition to physical access, the screens include interpretation by virtual BSL signers - tactile maps and braille labels are to be added shortly.
A hundred years ago Wales was an industrial giant and this story is told through themes that focus on people, home, work and industry. Perhaps inevitably in a country where intangible heritage - storytelling, poetry, music and song - is so embedded in daily life, it is the people, not the objects, who are the stars.
One of the curiosities of the National Waterfront Museum is that although it is rich in objects, with showcases in each themed exhibition area and large pieces of machinery, they effectively become wallpaper, since visitors appear to prefer to engage with the digital media.
This technology is striking and innovative throughout, making use of digital interface screens and responsive surfaces that bring drama to the story. The interpretation draws on a vast resource of images and oral history, often to brilliant effect.
Using data from the 1851 census, visitors can take a virtual trip through the streets of Victorian Swansea and enter the houses of real people; a virtual supermarket conveyor belt allows the visitor to fill a shopping basket and, in the process, learn about the diet and the budget of miners and their families.
Many of the oral histories are memorable, and testify to the eloquence the Welsh call 'hwyl'. An ex-miner, who started work in 1927, reminisces about the days when there was no health and safety and no canteen to see you through long shifts; a young entrepreneur compares his working life with that of his grandfather, who spent his life at the coalface.
But digital media has its limitations. It cannot convey the 'shock and awe' of a steel mill in action, or the claustrophobia of a coalmine. Nor do all age groups find it engaging. On a mid-week visit, the first interactive, a giant panorama of Swansea, was crowded with elderly people anxiously hovering over the screens, reluctant to touch them.
During peak times, the fact that only a limited number of visitors can actually control their interaction with the digital media, the majority having to watch what other visitors want to see, will cause frustration.
It also has the effect of distancing the visitor from the story. Though the website promises that 'you can be plunged into poverty, wallow in wealth, dabble with danger or even risk your health!', I felt detached from the story.
Unlike the Big Pit up the road, which is fired by the passion of former miners, the predominance of digital media at the National Waterfront Museum makes sure that you are always an observer, never a participant.
Free admission means that visitors are encouraged to visit frequently, however, and multiple layers of information will allow you to follow a different route each time.
You won't leave with an in-depth knowledge of the industrial history of Wales, but it would be impossible not to come away with your mind full of a host of personal tales and powerful images that offer fascinating glimpses into an industrial past that has virtually disappeared.
The story of the miners' wives taking their Sunday best clothes and shoes to the pawnbrokers on a Monday and redeeming them on a Friday, to get them through the week, will stay with me.
Jane Weeks is a museum consultant
Project data
Cost: £33.5m
Main funders: Heritage Lottery Fund: £11m, Welsh Assembly: £5.75m, European Union Objective 1 Funding: £3.7m, Welsh Development Agency: £2.75m, NMW £4.5m, City and County of Swansea £3.75m
Architect: Wilkinson Eyre
Designer: Land Design Studio
Software design and production consultant: Newangle
