We have a long term passion for building tools that help museums tell their unique and compelling stories. CultureObject – an open source tool we’ve built to get museum object records online – has been around for a while, and our next phase aimed to expand this into what we’ve given the lazy working title “CultureStory”. The basic idea is that museum objects are only so interesting online – what really makes them amazing is the knitting together of narratives around them. We envisaged a tool which would enable museums to ingest their object metadata, then drop these records into a narrative structure.

When we got chatting to Bristol Museums about their aspirations to get exhibition content online, we realised that our two aims were broadly aligned and this project was born.

The end result is a flexible WordPress theme which allows the content team at the museum to create visually rich online exhibitions. They can import sub-sets of object data for each one, and then use the interface to add timelines, maps, object galleries and so on.

We’re at the beginning of the process working with the museum and hope to roll out further improvements and modules over time, making the narrative creation process even more visual. Ultimately, we’d like this to become a stand-alone product by turning it into a plugin, much like CultureObject.

At a glance...

Project Type

Description

Bristol Museums wanted a way of bringing their objects and stories about their objects together into a visually stunning and easy to edit site.

Client

Bristol Museums

Link

See the site
We are generating a huge amount of rich multimedia and narrative which we wanted to publish online to complement our exhibitions programme. User research has shown that our audiences engage better with longer form content rather than just a database front-end. Thirty8 Digital developed a stunning, flexible theme which allows us to rapidly develop narrative content in a way which is complementary to the exhibition development process.
— Mark Pajak, Head of Digital, Bristol Museums

What people say

  • Niti Acharya, Hackney Museum Manager, Hackney Museum

    We had lots of ideas about what we wanted to do, but not about the specific steps required to make anything a reality – we use digital in our daily lives and learn most things on the job in the best way we can. Working with Mike at Thirty8Digital helped us crystallise what we wanted to achieve, why and how we would do it....

    Project: Hackney Museum Digital Engagement Strategy

  • Stefan Marianski, Education & Digital Strategy Officer, Freud Museum

    Freud Museum is a small organisation with limited in-house expertise, and Thirty8 Digital has been a lifeline for us. This is a friendly, down-to-earth agency that is deeply committed to helping arts & heritage organisation with their digital....

    Project: Freud Museum: digital strategy

  • Annie Ward, Heritage Project Manager, Leonard Cheshire Disability, Leonard Cheshire Disability

    Thirty8 Digital were fantastic to work with – they were friendly and very helpful throughout the process of building our heritage website. We had particular ideas about what we wanted from the website and they were able to make them happen....

    Project: Leonard Cheshire Rewind website

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