Place, Time and Memory

At Creative Space, a conference on museum design at the University of Leicester in 2004, I presented a paper entitled The Vital Museum. ¹ This was about how exhibit making could shift away from the static conventions of 2-D and 3-D design, graphics and showcases, towards theatre, storytelling and mediated environments. Here the audience effectively become actors within a drama set in an architectonic or scenographic space. Since then, my colleagues in Metaphor and I have experimented where we can with this kind of dramatized and mediated storytelling in exhibitions, whole museums and palaces. This chapter speculates whether the same concept can be expanded onto a larger canvas, exploring narratives of place on an urban scale.