From Transport to Travel: Contemporary Performance and Visitor Agency in a 21st Century Museum of Transport

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Research Context: Contemporary museum and heritage practice recognises the importance of curation, conservation, exhibition and interpretation strategies which allow multiple readings and uses of material culture (objects and buildings). A particular challenge is to consider how the generally very fixed sites - for physical reasons - of museums and other heritage locations can function as repositories and stimuli for divergent memories and experiences, thus encouraging the formation of diverse and fluid cultural identities. Key to this approach is an understanding of heritage as an ongoing process - as 'performance' or experience-centred, rather than artefact-based. The doctoral research project will investigate, through practical experimentation, the potential of this approach by exploring the Riverside Museum as a space of play, performance and ritual for adults as well as for children. Historically, these possibilities have been underexamined in sites of heritage. The particularities of the new Riverside Museum's location, architectural style, collection, history and remit suggest that it will provide a fruitful case study for an investigation into the potential of contemporary theatre and performance practices, beyond the more obvious forms of dramatic re-enactment and live interpretation, in the modern museum: - As a museum of transport concerned with movement, mobility and travel, it invites experience-centred and interactive, rather than artefact-based, forms of exhibition and interpretation. - As a new museum - an iconic landmark and destination designed by Zaha Hadid and central to the River Clyde's current regeneration strategy - it must negotiate the competing narratives of Glasgow's heritage as a centre for trade, transport and manufacturing and its current post-industrial reinvention. - In moving to a new venue, the museum is required to navigate a transition from the homely surroundings of its former location, where it attracted 500,000 visits annually, to the insistently-contemporary environment of Hadid's building. - Representing a major financial investment in Glasgow's cultural provision and a significant addition to the city's cluster of widely popular, generously-resourced and award-winning museums, it is also intended to capitalise on Glasgow's hosting of the Commonwealth Games in 2014, and to increase national and international interest in the city and its culture. Aims and Objectives are to: - Explore the potential of contemporary theatre and performance practices in developing new strategies for museum visitor engagement that is inclusive, imaginative and non-prescriptive.- Investigate the use of practices such as play, ritual, story-telling and mediated performance as models for visitor interaction and agency. - Test the significance of performance and action-based approaches towards museum interpretation and exhibition in a museum of transport. Applications and benefits: - The research will enable a greater understanding of visitor engagement and interaction within the Riverside Museum, which will impact on the future provision of interpretation and learning programmes, and which will inform and influence planned redisplays across Glasgow Museums. - The experimental performance elements will have particular applications in developing an innovative approach towards live interpretation, both within Riverside Museum and in other museums in the service. - The applications and benefits for Glasgow Museums will have an impact across the wider museum and cultural heritage sector. The research will explore a change of theoretical approach to visitor engagement which has the potential to develop policy and practice that will resonate throughout the sector.