Museums • For Kids • Nature

Burra Discovery Place

We worked with the Australian Museum to create a natural history discovery area for children. Burra, which means “eel”, explores Sydney’s flora and fauna. It’s based on a combination of First Nations concepts and western science.

Client

Location

Completed

Australian Museum

Sydney, Australia

2022

Awards

Best Awards: Exhibition and Temporary Stuctures - Bronze

AMaGA: Interpretation, Learning & Audience Engagement category

Image © Australian Museum, credit Anna Kučera.

The Process

We worked closely with Australian Museum’s First Nations team developing the storyline for the discovery area.

Through this process, we were challenged to take a different look at the place we were describing in the discovery area. Lucy Cant, Studio Cassells lead designer explains:

“We had to be constantly aware of ideas that come from a place of ‘westernness’ and be open to stepping out of our own shoes and exploring how to do things differently…
Instead of thinking of Sydney as a city, we started thinking of it as ‘Country’ - one of the world’s greatest estuaries, a rich gradient of fresh, bitter and salty waters, home to extraordinary plants and animals, and to people who have lived with them and learned from them for many tens of thousands of years.”

We also worked with Australian Museum’s diverse accessibility group to develop multiple sensory “ways in” to the experience.

Image © Australian Museum, credit Anna Kučera.

Image © Australian Museum, credit Anna Kučera.

The Result

Burra is a discovery area that is engaging, highly interactive and, importantly, a lot of fun.

The country’s natural environment is revealed through burra’s migration route along rivers, estuaries and out to sea. Interactives, graphics, and A/V are used to tell stories of this migration, and the underlying message that we need to care for the environment and each other.

Throughout the discovery young visitors can:

Be a bird and play in a “tern’s nest” filled with egg- and stone-shaped cushions
Use Microeye microscopes to take a closer look at the areas of flora and fauna
Sit in a bark canoe
Jump into the East Australian Current in a shadow play interactive

… and much more!

The discovery area also features spectacular environmental illustrations brought to life by artist Jasmine Miikika Craciun, a Barkindji and Malyangapa woman.

Learn more about how we helped create Burra on our blog