Museums • History • For Kids
Semangat Yang Baru (The New Spirit): exhibition concept
Client
Location
Completed
National Heritage Board (Singapore)
National Museum of Singapore
2023
The Project
Story Inc was engaged by Singapore’s National Heritage Board (NHB) to help develop the overall creative concept and visitor experience for an exhibition about the early years of Singapore as an independent nation. The project is a “test-bed” experience for the planned Founders Memorial.
We collaborated closely with the FM team within NHB, and curators from the National Museum of Singapore. Detailed design was by the talented Singaporean design company Farm. The exhibition was officially opened by Singapore’s Minister of Culture Edwin Tong SC, in April 2023.
The brief called for the values of the people of Singapore to be at the heart of the exhibition, which would focus on the dynamic first decades of Singapore’s independence.
As well as in-person and regular weekly Zoom meetings with team members, we planned and took part in a productive three-day workshop with visitor groups.
The Process
We created imagined visitor journeys, and bubble diagram narrative floor plans that evolved through the life of the project.
With the client and interactive developers Make, we developed
a personalised digital interactive layer to the experience. This
starred a number of characters who accompany visitors through the exhibition, expressing different values and deepening the connections between visitors and the exhibition content.
Visitors could choose a character at the sign-up stations for their personalised digital visitor experience.
The character development process involved a lot of discussion, visualisations, revisions and testing.
Visitors discovering stories about the independence years.
Group watching a fellow visitor at the flag raising interactive
Artefacts help bring the story to life.
SYB is an engaging and interactive experience that encourages conversations about the achievements and tradeoffs of Singapore’s early years. Above all, it prompts visitors to think about the values of Singapore’s founding generations and their leaders, and how they relate to the values of Singaporeans today.
The Result
Credits
FARM Architects