'Cultural Cities' - Report part two
Image: The Albert Dock, Liverpool, where National Museums Liverpool is working on a waterside transformation project to extend The International Slavery Museum
How can the UK use its waterfronts more effectively for visitor attraction and to unveil hidden history? How can physical museums navigate 'the wild ride' competition of new technologies such as AI? How can heritage buildings be redeveloped and supported by net zero measures?
Future Cities Forum's Cultural Cities report part two looks at the development of the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool, the future for virtual museums, attracting audiences through digital and immersive experiences, encouraging interaction from communities and the public in art programmes around the coast and re-developing heritage buildings for intellectual discourse.
Contributors to the discussion included Michelle Charters, Lead for the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool, Professor Murray Pittock, University of Glasgow, Catherine Wood, Director of Programmes, Tate Modern, Stephen Smith, Partner at Wright & Wright Architects, Hannah Harris, Co-founder, Plymouth Culture, and Cllr Jemima Laing, Deputy Leader of Plymouth City Council
News was released in February this year by the UK government that the cultural sector was to receive new funding, saying: '
'Hundreds of arts venues, museums, libraries and heritage buildings will receive a share of more than £270 million as part of an Arts Everywhere Fund from the government, supporting jobs and creating opportunities for young people to learn creative skills while helping to boost people’s sense of pride in where they live.
'The cash will be targeted at organisations in urgent need of financial support to keep them up and running, carry out vital infrastructure work and improve long term financial resilience.'
Above: Michelle Charters, Leader of the International Slavery Museum (Courtesy National Museums Liverpool)
Liverpool has been promised £10 million towards supporting two of its museums - the International Slavery Museum and the Maritime Museum. National Museums Liverpool has been working on a project to restore its waterfront and to unveil the stories connected to this part of the city's history. It moved a step closer to realising its ambition after planning permission was approved.
It said:
'The redevelopment will see the Dr Martin Luther King Jr Building transform into a prominent new entrance to the International Slavery Museum. A new entrance will create an inspiring welcome and a stronger sense of identity for the museum. Internally, the building will become a space for learning and community. A striking iron and glass bridge will connect the re-imagined International Slavery Museum galleries in the Hartley Pavilion to the Dr Martin Luther King Jr Building and offer spectacular views both into and out of the Royal Albert Dock.
'Maritime Museum’s improved visitor welcome and orientation space will enable visitors to appreciate the historic fabric and scale of the building on arrival. There will also be better circulation for visitors and enhanced commercial facilities, including a shop, café and events spaces.
'National Museums Liverpool has also worked closely with a variety of organisations including Historic England, Merseyside Civic Society and Liverpool City Council on the development plans.
'The redevelopment of International Slavery Museum and Maritime Museum is part of the wider Waterfront Transformation Project which links storytelling, heritage, community and hospitality to create a rich visitor experience and be a catalyst for social and environmental improvements in the area.
'This project is made possible with £9.9m from The National Lottery Heritage Fund, with thanks to National Lottery Players.'
Image: Albert Dock Liverpool
Making global connections is central to the International Slavery Museum's mission in its development plans, according to Michelle Charters, who joined Future Cities Forum's discussion:
'We are lucky to have thirty years experience of working with communities. Originally we were just a temporary gallery in the basement of the Maritime Museum in Liverpool. But you have to consider the context of the Liverpool, we were the second largest slavery city in England and we have the descendants of those slaves in our present day African Caribbean communities. They never went to museums in the city and we are trying to encourage that by re-designing two museums on the waterfront that are linked to slavery.
'We have a constant reminder of the two graving docks where slave ships were repaired and the wider public has not known of this history. How do you tell this story that didn't have a voice? The story of how the slave trade created wealth and development in Liverpool and the waterfront needs to be told. The significance of the city is not known globally. We have always and continue to make good connections between cultural organisations, the community and public sector. We now need to be critical in what we have achieved so far and think where to put our efforts in the future.
'So the next part of our journey is not only to tell the story of slavery but how that created connected opportunities throughout the UK and went across the globe. We are the only one of its kind as a slavery museum in the world, so we would like to get countries like Haiti and Cuba to tell their stories because of the connections of the slave trade. We already have stakeholder groups with young voices on our trailblazers scheme, teachers on our education committee and are partnered with the University of Liverpool. We need to tell this maritime story and how the growth of the city took place.
'Our planned for digital hub will help with this and is developing into an international research hub, where academics, scholars and people with a real interest in this international story can tap into the objects we have in our museum. There are so many stories, we will be research them forever and the work of our international research panel of trans atlantic slavery will feed into the work of our museum.'
Above: VR headsets - courtesy of the University of Glasgow
Professor Murray Pittock, at the University of Glasgow, who has led a research project into the value of digital museum collections online, joined the conversation. He said it was important to create a sustainable and commercial model for the virtual museum:
'Our survey showed that those who took part were very enthusiastic about the idea of virtual museums, they want more curatorial detail around objects but they also want to visit on site.'
The £5.6m Museums in the Metaverse (MiM) project at the University of Glasgow surveyed more than 2,000 people worldwide, and found 79% of respondents expressed interest in using digital technology to explore collections currently unavailable to the public.
Funded by UK Research and Innovation, MiM is developing an XR platform to showcase cultural heritage collections. With an estimated 90% of collections held in storage globally, digitising archives is seen as a way to broaden public engagement and increase accessibility.
The University of Glasgow commented:
'The survey also revealed high levels of awareness regarding VR technology, with 96% of respondents being familiar with it and 55% have engaged with it in some form. VR provides a fully immersive digital experience, often accessed through headsets, while XR is an umbrella term that encompasses all immersive technologies.'
Professor Pittock, who is Pro-Vice Principal of Special Projects at the University of Glasgow and co-author of the report, said:
“Our research reveals a clear appetite for immersive digital experiences, with people eager to interact with cultural artefacts in new and exciting ways. This shift in public expectations is already visible in the growing popularity of virtual reality cultural spaces globally, and our findings at Glasgow are helping chart a course for how museums can embrace this digital future.”
Under the MiM project, the University of Glasgow unveiled a VR exhibition celebrating the pioneering scientist Lord Kelvin. The exhibition features objects not normally on public display, presented within a digitally recreated, historically accurate 19th-century laboratory.
It states:
'The study also highlighted the potential of XR technology to attract younger audiences, with previous virtual projects having engaged large numbers of 25 to 34-year-olds.'
In 2023, the Musée d’Orsay in Paris launched its immersive VR experience, 'Tonight with the Impressionists, Paris 1874,' to record success, drawing 18,000 visitors in just five months. Using VR headsets, audiences engaged with artists and their famous works, including Claude Monet and Edgar Degas.
MiM is due to be completed in March 2025, and will launch an innovative two-sided XR platform. One side will allow visitors to explore cultural assets through immersive experiences, while the other will enable curators – both experts and novices – to craft new narratives by combining objects and virtual environments in ways not possible in the physical world.
Image: artefacts relating to Lord Kelvin - courtesy of The University of Glasgow
Professor Murray told Future Cities Forum:
'There is an appetite to have virtual museums with a high level of virtual realism. People want to get inside walrus skulls or on the same level with giant beetles for instance. Museum objects can be difficult to see on site. The Paris 'Meet the Impressionists' had an add-on of 16 Euros to the normal museum entry fee and the high numbers of visitors meant that one million Euros was collected. It almost covered the museum's costs. It is now going on tour and the (profit) margin will become much more rewarding.
'I would advise museums to create a consortium and buy in the experience of commercial suppliers. Seeing a virtual city presented in the past or present day can move intention to visit by tourists by up to forty per cent. Museums should liberate what is in their stores and be conscious of creative quarters and districts as a wayfinding experience which can be done virtually. This has a better payback than someone standing in front of a camera encouraging people to visit Bognor.'
Image above courtesy V&A Museum
'If a museum display is in keeping with the current virtual connection, it really can extend the impetus. Vienna's exhibition 'Last Days of Pompei' proves this. Cities like Paris and Vienna which have a higher percentage of cultural visitors, also have the highest demand for virtual experience.
'When the V&A Museums Ocean Liners exhibition went to Dundee, the number of visitors dropped and at the same time the prices were not reduced. Whereas the virtual museum can enable people to lift objects and explore them from their home. The virtual museum and its objects are of course perpetually present and people's visits to it can be recuring unlike the physical exhibition that eventually ends. It can have a strong level of curation. From it, people can go on to create their own exhibitions.'
Image: Tate Modern, Bankside, London
Tate Modern's Director of Programmes, Catherine Wood, described how she is engaged in getting the public to understand the work of digital artists first and foremost, before designing immersive experiences.
Currently Tate Modern is showing an exhibition 'Anthony McCall: Solid Light' which has an important immersive dimension. Tate Modern states:
'Beams of light projected through a thin mist create large three-dimensional forms in space, which slowly shift and change. As visitors move through these translucent sculptures of light, they create new shapes and discover their own mesmerising perspectives.'
A further exhibition at Tate Modern 'Electric Dreams' is open until 1st June and this looks at the history of artists using digital art forums. Tate Modern says:
'From the birth of op art to the dawn of the internet age, artists found new ways to engage the senses and play with our perception. Electric Dreams celebrates the early innovators of optical, kinetic, programmed and digital art, who pioneered a new era of immersive sensory installations and automatically-generated works.
'This major exhibition brings together ground breaking works by a wide range of international artists who engaged with science, technology and material innovation. Experience the psychedelic environments they created in the 1950s and 60s, built using mathematical principles, motorised components and new industrial processes. See how radical artists embraced the birth of digital technology in the 1970s and 1980s, experimenting with machine-made art and early home computing systems.
'One of Tate Modern’s most ambitious exhibitions to date, Electric Dreams offers visitors a rare chance to experience incredible works of vintage tech art in action – a look back at how artists imagined the visual language of the future.'
Electric Dreams: Art and Technology Before the Internet at Tate Modern is presented in the Eyal Ofer Galleries. In partnership with Gucci. Supported by Anthropic, with additional support from The Electric Dreams Exhibition Supporters Circle, Tate Americas Foundation, Tate International Council and Tate Patrons. Research supported by Hyundai Tate Research Centre: Transnational in partnership with Hyundai Motor
Image: courtesy of Tate Modern
Image above copyright Tate
Catherine Wood suggested to Future Cities Forum that art has to come first when curating an exhibition:
'Both 'Solid Light' and 'Electric Dreams' show the work of pioneers in art making, artists who envisaged being a person in space. We have tried to show the pioneers. Anthony McCall who was interested in the movement of air in cinemas with smoke and light beams and the exhibition enables people to spend hours interacting with these light beams. In Electric Dreams, Carlos Cruz Dias has expanded forms of painting and we have created rooms full of light projections. It tells the history of this art by allowing people to experience what it was.
'These days people think they have seen everything on their phone and you cannot get them to visit an exhibition unless they are going to be in it. We do hold hybrid learning projects such as our Oscar Murillo one in the Turbine Hall, where visitors can get messy and engaged with craft work. Doing as well as looking is important. People want to play. We need to pay attention to how people are interacting on screens at home with the shift to AI which is rapid. How galleries adapt to this 'wild ride' is going to be telling.'
More than £1.6 million has been awarded to Plymouth Culture, a National Portfolio Organisation (NPO), to develop and deliver a pioneering digital programme in partnership with Plymouth Sound National Marine Park and Plymouth City Council.
With £751,000 from Arts Council England and £860,000 from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, Sea for Yourself will use creativity and culture to engage residents with the UK’s first National Marine Park.
Partners aim to inspire collective stewardship of Britain’s Ocean City and establish a new benchmark for how creativity and digital technologies can engage local citizens with the environment.
Hannah Harris, CEO, Plymouth Culture, told Future Cities Forum:
'Sea for Yourself is a four year programme of digital commissions. We set out to ask what we mean by digital in designing the programme and our shared digital experiences. We are moving away from broadcasting messages to creating shared moments. The digital can enhance experiences for audiences and it's not digital for digital's sake. We have the first marine park here in Plymouth and we want to move people to a steward role of ocean experiences. We have five years to see the impact on children at school of a move through maritime education. We want to sense the value to their wellbeing and what it means to them.'
Plymouth Council's Deputy Leader, Cllr Jemima Laing commented:
It is good for Plymouth Council to have a USP through this programme. There is a tourist aspect to it but it is also about our residents. I have been shocked by the number of children who live in the city but have never been to the sea, unless taken by their school. This project really engages with the sea and if you know about it you will care about it and protect it in the future. It's what is underneath the sea that is also important.
'Our stories about the sea and Plymouth's heritage need telling, how these world changing journeys like how The Mayflower started out from the waterfront. It is about place-making and civic pride - sea, sailing and leaving our shores. There is so much culture in Plymouth, it deserves recognition.'
The importance of heritage was also taken up by Stephen Smith, architect at Wright & Wright, who has been re-developing the British Academy in London.
Wright & Wright explains:
'In expanding its presence in Central London, the British Academy aims to innovatively reshape how it engages with researchers, thought leaders and the public, by developing a spatially and technologically sophisticated network to promote discourse in the humanities and social sciences.
'Its Grade I listed building plays a critical role in this mission. Originally designed by John Nash, the Carlton House Terrace will be remodelled and optimised by Wright & Wright, thereby transcending its origins as a set of grand dwellings into an incubator of ideas and a crucible of public engagement.
'Central to the project is the design of a new auditorium at the heart of the Academy and three flexible event spaces to host discussion and debate. The Academy’s interior is indisputably magnificent and over time, changes to the fabric have always been carried out in an original and dynamic way.
'The ambition for these new works is to transform under-used spaces on the lower floors, improve visitor flow and accessibility, and activate the building as an armature for exchange, capable of sustaining a range of in-person, digital and hybrid activities, thereby enabling the Academy to reach an ever-wider, international audience.
'Designed and realised during Covid, the two upper floors of the British Academy were fully refurbished and modernised. The design took opportunities to open-up dark corridors to the light, long views to the Mall, introduce more meeting and informal spaces for exchange of ideas and hybrid working.
Stephen Smith said:
'The British Academy is an amazing building and any changes have to mirror the heritage of the grade one terrace. Our transformation project really took place before street level where we brough in double glazing a heat pumps to make sure it was redeveloped for the future and sustainability.
'The upper floors are palatial but hopeless for digital events. We couldn't bring in the tech there that was required for events. So the lower floor was where we opened up the building to a new digital audience.
'We created a 250-seater auditorium and the Academy had an opening event with a ten thousand digital audience with three new digital hubs being created, providing long term benefit. There is a ten year plan where digital is fifty per cent of programme funding in the future. The Academy's event also brought in bands, costume design and dancing, putting the human at the centre. As an architect, when you are designing, you are really giving a blank canvas. We want to drive the design but we must allow the programme to happen.'
Image below: The British Academy, remodelled spaces for events and discussions, fully equipped with digital technologies - courtesy of Wright & Wright.
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