Month: November 2024

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case study

Beyond the Bassline: 500 Years of Black British Music

Graphic image from the Beyond the Bassline 500 years of Black British Music

British Library, Living Knowledge Network

The British Library is one of the world’s largest libraries, holding a vast collection of books, manuscripts, and cultural artifacts. The Living Knowledge Network aims to democratize access to this vast heritage, allowing local communities to experience national treasures and cultural stories through libraries across the UK.

The goal of using Museum in a Box within the Living Knowledge Network was to make cultural and historical artifacts more accessible to local communities, particularly through hands-on learning. The British Library wanted to provide a tangible, interactive experience to engage people of all ages with their collections.

As part of the Living Knowledge Network, Museum in a Box was circulated to various libraries around the UK. Each library received a set of 3D-printed objects with accompanying audio descriptions, allowing visitors to engage with artifacts in new and exciting ways. The audio included context about the artifacts, with storytelling elements that brought history to life.

For example, Suffolk Libraries used Museum in a Box as part of their “Beyond the Bassline” exhibition, celebrating Black British music and culture. This initiative, running in 2022, allowed visitors to explore the evolution of Black British music through 3D objects and audio, fostering a deeper understanding of this cultural movement.

To supplement “Beyond the Bassline”, Coventry Libraries had recordings of poetry and spoken word supplied by Coventry Poet Laureate John Bernard. These sound and audio samples were taken from their collections and available to loan. You can visit the Coventry Libraries collection on our Heart Platform.

The use of Museum in a Box successfully engaged visitors with artifacts and cultural heritage in an immersive, multi-sensory way. Libraries like Suffolk highlighted Black British music through interactive exhibits that combined storytelling with physical objects. Feedback from both librarians and participants was positive, with visitors praising the hands-on and auditory elements that made the exhibits more accessible and engaging.

The British Library’s use of Museum in a Box demonstrated the power of combining tactile engagement with digital storytelling to enrich cultural education. Libraries found that the technology was effective in reaching audiences who might not traditionally engage with museum exhibits or library collections. It also fostered community involvement and inspired other libraries to think creatively about how to present cultural content.

The British Library’s Living Knowledge Network successfully used Museum in a Box to democratize access to cultural artifacts. The initiative exemplifies how libraries can serve as cultural hubs, making national collections accessible at a local level while also encouraging community engagement with underrepresented cultural stories.

For further details about the British Library’s Living Knowledge Network and how Suffolk Libraries implemented Museum in a Box as part of their “Beyond the Bassline” exhibition, visit their respective pages​.

Living Knowledge Network

Suffolk Libraries

A late addendum to this post from June 2025 where we just heard that Beyond the Bassline won the Museums & Heritage award 2025 for this show. More detail here
Categories
case study

Hunt Museum, Limerick

Members of the European Heritage summit sit at a table examining 3D printed sculptures.
Members of the European Heritage summit sit at a table examining 3D printed sculptures.

This case study explores how the Museum in a Box device was used as part of their Seeing Without Sight project to deliver a multi-sensory museum experience.

The Hunt Museum, located in Limerick, Ireland, has a rich collection of art and historical artifacts. Their mission is to increase accessibility, making museum experiences inclusive to all visitors, particularly those with disabilities.

The Seeing Without Sight project aimed to break barriers for visually impaired individuals, enabling them to engage with museum artifacts through sensory exploration. A key component was the use of Museum in a Box, which allowed visitors to interact with 3D-printed replicas of museum objects, paired with audio descriptions.

The project was co-created with visually impaired individuals, who participated in workshops to select objects, create vivid descriptions, and even record their voices for the audio guides. The Museum in a Box technology played a crucial role in enhancing this experience by delivering tactile and auditory engagement with the artifacts.

The project has been celebrated for its innovative approach, winning the Inclusive Event Award at the 2023 Heritage Council Awards. Visitors were able to touch 3D-printed replicas of objects while listening to audio descriptions via the Museum in a Box, making the museum experience more interactive and accessible to those with visual impairments. This method is being looked at as a model for other museums globally.

Hunt Museum, Limerick

“The Seeing Without Sight project and exhibition formed an important milestone on the Hunt Museum’s journey to expand access and inclusion for people with disabilities. The accessibility design solutions presented in it benefited and enriched the experience for everyone, not just people with visual impairment.  The exhibition was a huge success and particularly enabled us to build strong relationships with disability groups from across the Midwest in Ireland. Arts and Disability Ireland and Vision Ireland were huge supporters and promoted it to their service users on an on-going basis.” Maria Cagney, Curator of Education and Outreach

Their Seeing Without Sight Project involved:

  1. A year of workshops during which our visually impaired co-creators explored Collection objects through touch and supported the writing of audio description text for 35 objects
  2. Visually impaired co-creators performed the audio recordings of nine objects of the objects they selected. they selected. These were presented using Museum in a Box.
  3. Rapid Innovation Unit at the University of Limerick 3D printed 8/9 objects to exceptionally high quality and standard
  4. Large yellow interpretative panel was designed to work in conjunction with screen reader technology
  5. Object labels were made available in large format and braille
  6. Sensory station desks are height adaptable for wheel chairs

Lessons Learned

The use of Museum in a Box demonstrated that technology could enhance museum accessibility and inclusivity. By combining tactile learning with audio, the Hunt Museum ensured that all visitors could form a connection with the objects in their collection, expanding the scope of traditional museum interaction.

For further details about the project, you can refer to the Hunt Museum’s documentation of the Seeing Without Sight project​.

The featured image is of the European Heritage Hub at the Royal Palace, National Gallery, Bucharest, as part of the second European Heritage Summit, which was organised by Europeana Foundation in partnership with Europa Nostra. Photo Courtesy of the Hunt Museum Limerick

The Hunt Museum

Heritage Week 2023

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company news

Changes over the, ahem, *checks notes* last 15 months.

Inside a Blue Museum in a Box
Inside a Blue Museum in a Box

The big news that we want to bring you is that Museum in a Box batch 5 is now shipping and available to purchase from the store. That’s the most important thing we need to tell you.

As we mentioned in our last update, to get back to making boxes we needed to redesign some of the electronics, including the computer at the heart of it. That meant we had to rewrite the software, and that’s done too. It’s faster to boot up and now uses USB-C.

We also took this opportunity to replace the NFC reader. The old ones were getting difficult to source and were one of the weaker components in the design. The new one is designed in-house and we’ve released it as open source hardware for other folk to use too!

All of this means that we have solved the supply issues which had plagued us post pandemic.

We have been busy and although we might not have been busy writing blog posts we have been busy sending post, as most of Batch 4 went out to the British Library for their project Beyond the Bassline: 500 years of Black British Music. The British Library in turn circulated these to partner libraries up and down the country with accompanying objects for Beyond the Bassline.

Partner libraries across the country each received a pair of boxes to take Beyond the Bassline to a national audience. Some of the libraries came up with their own local projects to complement it, for example Coventry Libraries came up with Tales of Two Tone which has proved really popular, looking at the number of boops they have had. You can see Coventry’s collection on the Heart platform here.

We’d also like to highlight the wonderful display that Suffolk Libraries have made of theirs. The easy chairs look great to settle down in for a afternoon of easy listening.

If you would like to experience Beyond the Bassline in your area them some projects are still open to engage with, you can find where and what dates they are available on the British Library’s Living Knowledge Network.

This summer, we had some great feedback while displaying Museum in a Box at Liverpool Makefest: teachers who were busy booping our Try Me Objects were telling us just how useful they would be in the classroom; and kids enjoying hearing the different frogs from Frogs in a Box.

Frogs in a box cards displayed alongside Museum in a box

For now folks that is all but we promise that we will be bringing you more soon. Did we mention that Museum in a Box batch 5 is now available?