Duke Street People's Museum of Barrow

This was a big project collaborating with Andrew and Sue Deakin from FON (Full of Noises) and John Hall. Based around local oral history we created a week long People’s Pop-Up Museum installation on and about Duke Street in Barrow and ended up welcoming and chatting to 1908 visitors!

The stories recorded coalesed around the Old Barrow Museum, the Public Hall and Pass’s Department Store. Our aim was to recreate a curiousity shop with the feeling of the old museum, jam-packed with collections, art installations and memories.

We worked with Charlotte Hawley from the Dock Museum to bring treasured items from storage, including “THE MOOSE”, Blackshaw’s Bear, the Penny Fathing and 100-year-old taxidermy birds.

The aim was to promote engagement in local social history through shared recollections and conversations, and to open a discussion about the future of the street and the role of artists, museums and the wider community should play in shaping what that future should be.

Bringing interactive art to the people

We developed six interactive artworks to fit the space. A switchboard listening post, a MooseCam, an interactive real-time dress maker, a holographic Mummy’s hand, a Curious Cabinet and a Photo Portal.

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The Curious Cabinet was created for a previous project imagining if early Television had taken a different invented path.

See it in action up close here:

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For more info check out the original project here: The Curious Cabinet

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The listening post used an old switchboard style control. You slot in a connector to listen to a track from the gramophone.

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Built into an old sewing machine table a webcam take images from a tray of materials to generate a dress pattern with symmetry, style and animation controlled by in built switches and dials.

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The Photo Portal transported visitors into archive photos of Duke Street matching their size and shadow to fit.

We met and chatted with hundreds of people over the week, heard so many stories, saw people’s collections, and found out for sure that this type of thing is needed and wanted in Barrow.

We were on all on hand throughout the exhibition week, which meant we could talk with our visitors, and listen to their stories, comments and suggestions. We made it clear that photography, chat, and handling of many exhibits was part of the experience, and this, along with the enthusiasm and energy of our visitors, created a warm and inclusive atmosphere from the moment we opened the doors.

Common suggestions were “Make this permanent” and “Find a bigger space.” We could argue in favour and against both. A rolling exhibition in a permanent site could work well and following on from the success of this week Charlotte’s keen to do something along these lines.

A few tweets from the week