Gorillas in the Great Hall

Take one 16th century house set in rolling parkland in the suburbs of Nottingham and add one fabulous collection of natural history specimens and you have the unique mash-up of Wollaton Hall.

When Wollaton was acquired by Nottingham City Council in 1926, it happily coincided with the need to re-house the city's natural history collections. So it seemed logical to place the latter inside the former. What you have now is one of the best-loved quirky museums of Britain.

We ran a series of workshops brainstorming, discussing and evaluating ideas for how the house and collection can be reinterpreted over the next few years, and how the team can maximise engagement  with current visitors and the pool of potential visitors who frequent Wollaton Park. From this mass of ideas, we produced an interpretation plan for Wollaton Hall to guide future development of the site and worked with the team on delivery. 

One of the highlights - as well as meeting George the resident gorilla - was using collage as a way of the team getting the team to explore creative ideas for interpreting natural history. It sounds scary or potentially naff but this was not primary school collage and once the paper and scissors were out on the table, there was no stopping them...