Articles

Museum Design

MOD. Lessons 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12: the stuff we’ve learnt in our first year of building a new museum

2017 has been a huge year for MOD.

Our team has grown from one person (Kristin) to nine. We’ve produced an anthology and an art exhibition in collaboration with SA Museum and UniSA’s wonderful communication design students. We’ve run robot and design workshops with young people and have welcomed our first Youth Advisory Board. We’ve met so many new people — makers, artists, technologists, researchers, creators and young adults who have helped us along the […]

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Museum Design

MOD. Lesson #4: How to kill your darlings

“Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it — whole-heartedly — and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings”. (Quiller-Crouch, 1914) Just like any good writer, we’ve been killing our darlings as we’ve developed the narrative, and the content, for our first exhibition MOD.IFY. This has been a necessary part […]

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Museum Design

MOD. Workshop Experience

A special guest post from MOD.YAB member, Eleanor Brown

A few months ago I was asked to join the MOD. YAB. Which is the Youth Advisory Board for MOD. (You can check it out here!) Being a part of the YAB has already taught me a lot, including how much learning and school has changed.                    Eleanor Browne […]

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Science

How to get into science communication the long way

(and lessons learnt)

Lesson 1: Keep it short During my undergraduate degree in biology, I was taught how to communicate science using the standard essay format: Introduction-Hypothesis-Method-Discussion-Conclusion. It was a beautiful skill to learn and one which put me in good stead for my honours and PhD. I found out the hard way however that it was not the […]

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Museum Design

MOD. lesson #3: What young adults want from a museum experience

MOD. will be a museum for everyone. However, core to the MOD. vision is to create a space, at the intersection of art, science and innovation, for young adults aged 15–25 to be, and be inspired. With this in mind it was important to our whole team that we not only build a museum that achieves this […]

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Museum Design

On Waging Peace

Today is the International Day of Peace, a day the United Nations devotes to strengthening the ideals of peace, both within and among all nations and peoples. Peace is something we’ve been thinking about a lot at MOD. over the last few months as we prepare for an exhibition opening in November 2018 on the theme […]

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Museum Design

Welcoming the MOD.YAB (our new Youth Advisory Board)

When you are designing a place to be inspiring for young adults, how do you know it is going to actually be just that….inspiring? It is a big call — what inspires one young person might not inspire the next. Our biggest fear is that MOD. will be, well…uncool. So we decided we needed informed, young leaders […]

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Museum Design

MOD. Lesson #2: How to be a museum

“Why on earth would you call yourselves a museum?” We’ve had this question. In fact we’ve had it multiple times. We call ourselves MOD. We also often talk about ourselves as a museum of discovery. Our goal is to become Australia’s leading future-focused museum, provoking new ideas at the intersection of art, science and innovation. You’ll […]

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Museum Design

MOD. Lesson #1: How to build a museum

On the 23rd of January, 2017, our team gathered for the first time in what we have now called the MOD. POD. The four of us (Leanne, Daniel, Simon and I) had never met before but had been brought together on that day by MOD. Director, Dr Kristin Alford. Our room, the ‘pod’, was a […]

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Museum Design

On Being Inspired

Late last year I was frustrated. I knew what we were trying to create and I could describe it if I talked around it. But I wanted to articulate our essence in a way that would resonate quickly with a broad audience. Finally we* worked it out. A place to be and be inspired. That’s […]

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