Exhibition Development – Flow Associates

Fleming Centre

The Fleming Centre is part of the wider Fleming Initiative, established jointly by Imperial College Healthcare and Imperial College London to find equitable solutions to antimicrobial resistance at a global scale.

It will be a space bringing together researchers, policymakers, clinicians, behavioural experts, commercial partners and the public to combine their shared networks, expertise and skills to tackle antimicrobial resistance.

We brought our experience in formative and front-end research to support a robust and collaborative approach to the development of the Fleming Centre, due to open in 2027 in London, Paddington. Working with the Fleming Centre’s Youth Collective and exhibition designers Casson Mann, we designed and facilitated co-design and consultation sessions to inform the interpretive approach for the complex subject of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). As part of the early stage work, we also collated and summarised three years of previous consultation and research as primer for the project team and their collaborators.

We are adept at facilitating, digesting and translating conversations and consultation into insights that are relevant and actionable. Working on projects at this early stage is exciting – we deeply enjoy working with our clients to make meaningful design decisions that set solid foundations for their future plans. Our sessions involved interactive games, roleplay and discussion, keeping the young people’s involvement dynamic, fun and engaging. From the sessions we produced reports of insights to directly inform design decisions, using our experience as designers to shape the feedback into something relevant, useable and actionable.

Flow work extensively with research and academic partners and understand the challenges of translating research into narratives that make sense for the wider public and that resonate with their lives. We will be working with the Fleming Centre on ongoing co-design and consultation, as well as a summative evaluation after opening, capturing how this collaborative approach to a vital and evolving issue for society will translate into an engaging and empowering visitor experience.

Tate Artist Rooms

Tate commissioned us develop a framework and supporting toolkit with resources to capture the impact of the new form of Artist Rooms. This framework will enable a better understanding of audiences, thedevelopmental impact on the touring exhibition for partners and provide Tate with insights to further develop this new model of packaged touring exhibitions.

The Evaluation Framework enabled Tate to:

Define and capture evidence of change, giving them a deeper understanding of their impact
Gather evidence of successes and challenges, enabling them and their partners to learn and grow the programme
Provide materials to champion their work and advocate for their touring programmes
Deliver high quality evidenced reports to funders and stakeholders
Empower their Learning team to share their insights with partners and peers

This framework and methodology underpinned the key ambitions for Artist Rooms in enabling access to collections nationally. It supported exploring how working in partnership can enhance access to international artists, particularly for younger people.

Flow provided:

Planning how it can be integrated and delivered by the Artist Rooms team into the package of resources provided to support partner venues
Understanding current evaluation and any barriers to effective collection and analysis
Creating a simple and useable toolkit for staff who are collecting evidence and requiring simple methods for analysing it
Advising on how evidence collection can be integrated into visits to the exhibition, related programming and use of supporting resources
Delivering training sessions with staff on using the framework and its tools
Making recommendations for future evaluation plans

Turner Contemporary Emerging Producers

Flow Associates were commissioned in 2021 to evaluate Turner Contemporary’s Emerging Producer project, following the progress of 8 Emerging Producers as they worked together towards an exhibit in 2023, responding to the 1953 short documentary film “O’Dreamland!”. This project focuses on the experience and development of the Emerging Producers, and explored what this could mean for future projects run by Turner Contemporary. Flow led the group in exploring experience design for their exhibition, “Oh, Dreamland!”, running workshops and acting as critical friends during its development.

The Emerging Producers were a group of eight young people recruited in Autumn 2021 by Turner Contemporary to lead on the development and delivery of their summer exhibition opening in 2023. They were recruited via an open call for young people aged 18 to 25 living and/or studying in Kent. This co-creation project would provide an opportunity to gain experience of working in the arts sector, building their CVs while working alongside filmmakers, artists, and exhibition makers. The call stressed that no previous experience was necessary, just a desire to ‘collaborate, get creative and commit to the programme’. Crucially this was a paid position, allowing the Emerging Producers to integrate the part time position with other work, study and life commitments, and all eight Emerging Producers were involved until the end of the project. The group met weekly on a Thursday morning, and additional hours for research or taking part in other events was paid at the hourly rate of £9.30, which increased part way through in line with the gallery’s commitment to paying living wage.

At the start of the second year the core focus for the project shifted and some of the final stated outputs (i.e. to co-create a major exhibition, and create a toolkit of best practice for running co-creation activity) gave way to an outcomes-driven process of collaborative working where the group were able to take on production roles to deliver Salamagundy ’22 a variety show at Dreamland featuring a range of local acts; and to co-create Oh! Dreamland, an immersive exhibit running alongside an artist-led exhibition in Turner Contemporary’s Clore Learning Studio. This was run alongside Mark Lecky’s, “In the Offing“, activating the exhibition for younger audiences by curating a social and fun space for them within the gallery.

Look Again

An arts and heritage trail championing Milton Keynes’ design history has arrived in the city centre.

Milton Keynes is known as a model ‘new planned city’ around the world. Central Milton Keynes is on the verge of another reinvention which will see a boom in residential development. The city suffers from negative preconceptions about its authenticity and environment which the council, developers and local businesses were looking to change. Look Again tells the story of the new city’s people and places and highlights its standout modern heritage, art, architecture, and design.

The 24-stop free trail runs from Fred Roche Gardens to Lloyds Court and includes artworks in and around Centre:MK.

Scanning a QR code on any of the trail signs takes you to www.lookagainmk.city where you can learn more about that specific piece of art, building or green space, giving a fresh view of the cityscape.

Flow Associates worked alongside Milton Keynes City Council, with funding from developers, to carry out an assessment of the existing offer which consisted of an app and website. We proposed a new web-first approach to create a responsive website which brought the cities art, design and stories to life.

Working closely with the city’s heritage, highways and marketing teams, as well as archives and business partners, Look Again brought together a vision of the city as an evolving showcase for a unique period of British history, modern architecture and urban design. Flow partnered with City Discovery Archive Milton Keynes and Living Archive Milton Keynes, to use archive materials and media from their collections in interpreting the city centre and encouraging locals, workers and visitors to “look again” to rediscover the urbanity around them. “Look Again” is a sideways look at Milton Keynes’ often misunderstood urban landscape to revel in the utopian ideals which built the UK’s youngest city and encourage people to see it as a playground for modernist ideals around civic participation, quality design, and the role of public art in identity and placemaking.

To ensure that Look Again reached the audiences who would be the drivers of Milton Keynes’ future, Flow produced an Audience Development Strategy which built on consultation at public events and audience insights from businesses and cultural partners. From this, we produced a two-year marketing plan across channels to target and reach them through press, events and social media.

The branding, website and layout of Look Again was by Spy Studios who used the typography and colourways of the city to create a vibrant design identity which resonates with the city’s era of creation.

This first-phase from 2023-24 is a pilot covering Central Milton Keynes. Look Again will look to be developed with partners over the coming years to include more locations alongside the creation of the new MK City Archives which will bring together the collections held across the city.

Natural History Museum

A major research and consultation project working with curatorial and Learning teams to develop a new Children’s Gallery, a global international education initiative, onsite programming and online activities. We worked alongside the teams onsite on remotely to establish the guiding principles for the project, develop key interpretive themes and programming which engages young people with caring for and understanding their immediate natural environments and ecosystems as well as those globally.

The research explored how to:

Optimise the experience of the new Children’s Gallery, through activities on themes of Wild Voices, connecting with animals’ lives in different habitats.
Lift barriers of access to schools, families and groups with intersecting factors of disadvantage or SENDs, by consulting them, travelling to settings with activities, and easing their experience of the NHM as a whole.
Inspire and acknowledge young children as imaginative friends of the natural world, and provide templates for partners in the GEI, through online resources for digital and real-world play and nature connection.
Develop skills of adults (including NHM staff and volunteers) to reconnect with nature and support children through a ’School of Nature Play’.
To do action research as the activities are developed, to serve the global initiatve with insights.