Taigh Chearsbhagh Heritage and Art Centre // Mobile Museum
Taigh Chearsbhagh Heritage and Art Centre // Mobile Museum
THE CHALLENGE

Set in the mesmerising Scottish Island of Uist is Taigh Chearsabhagh Heritage and Art Centre. The centre sought to expand its cultural engagement across the Outer Hebrides but faced a fragmented community with limited access for various reasons. In reality, Islanders did not feel that the arts and heritage centre was for them, but rather for Island visitors. While this does not reflect the work of the centre, it certainly represented a perception of it. I spent 3 months on the Island working on this self-initiated project for my Masters' Thesis.

THE INTERVENTION

I proposed and designed a mobile, interactive museum object, based on an idea of a travelling suitcase of stories prototype that I used to engage with locals. The result was a digital/physical object that democratises storytelling and art exploration. The mobile museum aims to encourage dialogue, preserve local narratives, and bring the museum directly into the community, regardless of geographical and access difficulties on the Island.

YEAR

2017

ROLE

Design Research, Interaction Design

COLLABORATORS

Taigh Chearsabhagh

Process highlights

Design Research & cocreation

  • Stakeholder Mapping: Identified actors within the heritage and arts ecosystem, spanning internal staff, artists, educators, and broader community members. I particularly enjoyed meeting with the local and foreign artists who heavily impacted my perception of the Island.

  • Semi-Structured Interviews: Gathered diverse perceptions of art, the Centre, and belonging through conversations with both internal and external stakeholders.

  • Engagement Tools: Created experimental formats; story stations and pop-ups in the centre itself as well as cafes and restaurants- even streets, workshop days open to public in the centre, all with the aim of exploring collective meaning-making and provoke conversation around art, identity, language, culture, and representation.

  • Insight analysis through visualisation: Surfaced a deep sense of intergenerational belonging, as well as concern around cultural erosion and the future of local traditions.

Design

  • Concept Development: Rooted in digital culture theory, networked objects, and participatory museology—framing the object as a cultural interface.

  • System Mapping: Mapped all physical/digital touchpoints, actor roles, and curation flows across the mobile museum experience.

  • Service Blueprint: Outlined both front-stage user interactions and backstage institutional processes to support sustainability and repeatability. The object includes elements that only need to be produced once (the exploring cube), and elements that can be renewed, representing new exhibitions and projects (the blocks)

  • Iterative design: Evolved the format of the object through testing with the stakeholders of the centre, inviting their buy in.

Outcomes

  • New Engagement Model: Reframed the arts and heritage centre as something mobile, participatory, and community driven beyond the walls of the Centre, past the difficult geography and infrastructure of the Island, reaching all the way to those who left to bigger cities.

  • Elevated Local Narratives: Enabled what I found to be underrepresented voices and invisible communities to contribute their own stories about their place and their heritage, beyond the need to be an "artist".

  • Cultural Preservation in Motion: Created a tool that can continuously evolve if people find it useful and meaningful enough to them, becoming a living archive that depends on their participation.

Design research

Prototype, main object and interchangeable pieces representing current exhibtions and work at Taigh Chearsabhagh