Making a legacy accessible to different audiences

THE CLIENT

The Arts House

WHAT WE DID

Stakeholder consultation & engagement
Audience research & engagement
Storytelling & content strategy
Experience design & implementation

Audience engagement strategy and experience design for The Arts House

The Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth and the National Heritage Board organised the exhibition The Parliament in Singapore History to commemorate the nation’s parliamentary system and the historic The Old Parliament House. The exhibition also served as the occasion to remember Singapore’s founding prime minister, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, on the first anniversary of his passing.

The Old Parliament House is managed by The Arts House, which commissioned HOL to design and facilitate a guided tour, Tribute to Our Founding Fathers. The tour would fulfil several objectives:

  • make the exhibition more personal, interesting and accessible
  • pay tribute to Singapore’s founding parliamentarians like Mr Lee Kuan Yew, Dr Goh Keng Swee and Mr S Rajaratnam and highlight their contributions to nation-building
  • allow older Singaporeans to revisit Mr Lee’s accomplishments for Singapore and the younger generation and the uninitiated to get to know his remarkable deeds

IMPACT

Tours conducted

0

439

Individual attendees plus many more in school groups

Renewed appreciation

gained by visitors of the contributions of Mr Lee Kuan Yew and other founding parliamentarians

Forty-eight guided sessions were conducted for the public, including Singaporeans and tourists, and many school groups. The visitors praised the interactivity of the tour, and some even requested that the tours be conducted in other languages such as Mandarin.

Many older Singaporeans expressed the wish for younger Singaporeans to take the tour to understand the country’s struggles and resilience in overcoming the odds, and for the tour to become a permanent fixture at The Arts House. Tourists feedbacked that they admired what the founding parliamentarians had contributed to Singapore.

SUMMARY

Appreciation for Singapore’s founding fathers

Singapore’s road to independence and nation-building came with many social and economic challenges. The path would have been harder if not for the founding parliamentarians’ grit and resourcefulness. By designing thoughtful audience-led tour experiences that met the specific needs of different target groups, we were able to help Singaporeans, young and old, appreciate this fact with pride.

ABOUT THE CLIENT

The Arts House

The Arts House, formerly the Old Parliament House, is a venue that hosts art exhibitions and arts performances. Built in 1827, the building is the oldest surviving building in Singapore. It was the seat of the Parliament of Singapore from 1965 to 1999.

Challenge

Reaching different target audiences

The client wanted the exhibition to reach as many people as possible, including residents in Singapore and tourists, given that the Parliament was a significant part of Singapore’s independence and nation-building. The exhibition also provided an apt opportunity for Singaporeans to remember Mr Lee Kuan Yew, who had passed away one year earlier.

However, the exhibition targeted a wide-ranging audience, with different audience segments having different needs and wants. Thus, a one-size-fits-all tour would not be able to engage everyone effectively.

On its own, the exhibition told the Parliament’s story through rich content with panel texts and archival photos. This posed no issue for visitors who came for the parliamentarians’ stories because they would be genuinely interested.

The Old Parliament House provided the visitors with a tranquil, well-lit setting for these visitors to appreciate the content more deeply. However, for other visitors like children, teenagers and family groups, holding their attention would be a challenge.

The exhibition was held along the hallways of the Old Parliament House, which were relatively narrow and could not accommodate large groups.

In sum, while the organisers wanted the exhibition to appeal to as many people as possible, the presentation style and space limitations led to inevitable challenges. We would help the client reach as many people as possible by navigating these constraints creatively.

INSIGHTS AND STRATEGY

Audience-led tour experiences

We began by identifying the exhibition’s target audience groups and their unique attributes, needs and wants.

Tourists and adults would have come to the exhibition with a goal in mind – to learn about Singapore’s founding history and parliamentarians. Therefore, there would be less need for “frills” but more focus on solid storytelling through good content.

For tweens and teens in school groups, the founding fathers would be relatively distant, though they might have heard about them from their parents and grandparents.

The exhibition topic might not be interesting to tweens and teens. Still, we could capture their attention and hold their interest with a competitive element, as they were in the age group that could not resist taking on challenges together with their friends.

The Arts House
The Arts House

And with school groups, we would also need a solution to accommodate their large numbers in a smaller space like the Old Parliament House.

Intergenerational family groups comprised grandparents, parents and grandchildren. While the grandparents greatly admired Mr Lee and other founding parliamentarians and had many stories to tell, their children and grandchildren might not know these men well.

So, we would design the experience so that the different generations could learn from and share stories with one another. Family groups would also prefer more interactives, quizzes and tactile experiences that would hold the children’s attention.

After considering the exhibition’s content, spatial design and target audiences, we came to the solution: customised tour programmes for each target audience group.

The Arts House image
Photo credit: weekendnotes

Public tours, targeted at the general public, i.e. adults and tourists, were designed to be more content-driven. This audience segment was already keen on the content. The docents shared supplementary information and stories not found on the panels and showed the visitors additional photos that complemented the stories.

The Arts House image
Photo credit: weekendnotes

To hold the interest of tweens and teens on school trips, we engaged them with a competition among friends. We also enhanced the storytelling by bringing in handling artefacts to complement panel viewing, as the exhibition generally needed more tactile and multimedia experiences.

We designed two tours with similar objectives but different pathways to accommodate large numbers of students in the narrow hallways. This also eased the schools’ logistical challenges so they did not have to make multiple trips to the exhibition or miss out on the important learning content altogether.

The Arts House image

As children may be involved in family groups, we limited the content to important highlights so that the young ones would not be overwhelmed.

By focusing on the highlights, we could also leave enough time for family members to share family stories and talk about personal experiences with one another. These anecdotes might otherwise never be shared in their daily lives without the exhibition’s context. We also used handling artefacts to add hands-on experiences to the exhibition.

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I hope the younger generation will take the tour and learn from the stories of Singapore as a young nation. Please consider extending the tour beyond the running period.

Mr Vincent Chua
Tour Participant, Member of Public
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