Image © Paul Cliff

Climate Control

(Manchester Museum, 2015)

What can be done to address climate change?

Climate Control was Manchester Museum’s contribution to Manchester’s time as European City of Science. The exhibition and accompanying programme were developed in partnership with the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and Manchester Climate Change Agency, and coincided with the development of Manchester’s climate change strategy. The exhibition focussed on interactivity and creativity to explore climate change and personalised climate change action. I led on the overall project, exhibition content and storyline, and partnerships, working with other staff, and with MET Studio who designed the exhibition, to develop the educational and events programme.

museum visits can be more than simple passive or browsing experiences…

The main exhibition gave visitors two entrances to chose from: explore the past, or explore the future. This aimed to emphasise that museum visits can be more than simple passive or browsing experiences: people have agency. In the exhibition, visitors added stickers to a white wall to represent our collective climate impacts. Visitors also shared their ideas on how we can take climate action. Questions were posed asking visitors what they thought was possible or not possible, to encourage people to form their ideas, express them to others, and to find out what other people thought, to build collective intelligence.