Imperial War Museum North
The Experience Business was invited to evaluate the Visitor Experience across the whole of the Ground Floor space to inform a substantial redevelopment project. What began as a largely evaluative process quickly transformed into a re-imagining of the holistic Visitor Experience and an exercise in Brand Expression.
At IWM North there is an incredible synergy between the symbolism of the architecture, the charged sense of place (its location in a site devastated by the Manchester Blitz) and the thematic and curatorial uniqueness of the museum (war and conflict, the past and the ever present, all brought together in an object-light yet experientially rich museum experience). Always implicit, never fully designed for and hampered by necessary compromise (in response to contextual changes and economic imperatives over the years) the museum is sitting on a brand ‘depth charge’ of enormous proportions. If fully leveraged, it has the potential to ignite deeper, richer, more powerful experiences than has previously been attainable and generate more income in the process.
The Experience Business have just completed an outstanding piece of evaluation work centred around dynamic workshops, creative problem solving and in depth creative conversations. They involved staff in the process of journey mapping and brand awareness and this was invaluable in helping us to put the visitor first in everything we do as well as thinking of the museum and its collection as a vehicle to the ‘experience’. The Experience Business are clearly passionate about the visitor and have devised unique ways of really understanding what the visitor wants and expects. Thank you!
Adrian Wells, Director of Operations, Imperial War Museum North