Portsmouth Historic Dockyard

We led the project team for this major re-development project over several years.

Our work covered many elements – a National Lottery bid for a new Royal Marines Museum; a new Collections Centre to give public access to a range of stored collections and archives; a re-developed Visitor Centre; improved visitor experience; branding across the whole Dockyard site.

We moved the project focus away from the collection and museum building to instead focus on visitors. We trained staff in how to use evidence-based audience insight to drive a totally new approach to the narrative and content of the new Museum.

Using detailed audience insight, we worked with the project team to create new topics, storylines, and activities that would engage different audiences. These were the basis for innovative concepts for the Museum and Collections Centre, outline content for different zones and a range of hi-tech and low-tech interpretation. Working closely with the gallery designers, we developed the Interpretation Strategy for both the new Museum and Heritage Centre and co-authored the successful National Lottery bid, awarded £16m.

Deep visitor understanding was fed into re-developing the Visitor Centre to give visitors more of an idea of the whole site, what they can see, where everything is, what they can do today and where to begin. Improved ticketing and information has resulted in faster entry and reduced visitor queueing.

We transferred this approach to identifying improvements for other associated museums, including the Fleet Air Arm Museum and Royal Navy Submarine Museum.