Adventure Planet
Adventure Planet is an exciting interactive children’s gallery at the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh. The gallery aims to raise awareness and increase knowledge of biodiversity and conservation in children aged 3 to 8, and their families. Our brief was to communicate these topics in a safe and appropriate manner for the age group, which would lead to specific learning outcomes. We developed three themes: Marine, Woodland and Extinction and created an immersive and sensory space to engage children through touch, smell, sound and vision. We designed a range of fun and thought-provoking activities and interactive games to spark ideas about caring for wildlife and the steps we can take to preserve the natural world in our everyday lives.
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Client
National Museums Scotland
Services
Exhibition Design
Graphic Design
Illustration
Digital Strategy and Design
Interactive Design
Project Management
Approach
We used colour to define the different themes within the gallery and commissioned illustrations which we transformed into large-scale wall and window treatments to create an immersive environment. We introduced new lighting and overhead baffles to lower the ceiling height and make the gallery feel more intimate. We centred each of the three themes around a focal element: an enormous stegosaurus skeleton cast forms the dramatic centrepiece of the Extinction theme, while a life-sized model oak tree enables children to burrow into its roots and come face-to-face with mammals and insects as they learn about the building blocks of ecosystems. For the Marine theme we created a three-dimensional submarine where children can take a deep sea dive to learn about Scotland’s diverse sea life.
“We loved the Adventure Planet zone and spent hours camouflaging a fish to keep it safe from a marauding shark, digging for ‘dinosaur bones’ and crawling inside a tree to discover what beasties live there. It’s pretty awesome.”
Visitor Review
Participation and engagement
Learning through play is embedded throughout this gallery. The displays are highly interactive and combine tactile, sensory and digital exhibits with specimens from the Museum’s natural sciences collection. Displays are designed to be robust and engaging while communicating meaningful messages. Children can take on the role of palaeontologists in the interactive digital Dino Dig to reveal hidden fossils or digitally create their own camouflaged fish and release it into the water to discover if it remains undetected by the shark. Low-tech games, tactile models and dressing-up costumes, add to the fun and engagement of the Adventure Planet experience.
