Dear Les

There is certainly very little in the UK. A web site would be a neat idea.
I've been looking at this very issue for the last couple of years now at
the Science Museum in London, UK. We began a large (5 year) project a
couple of years ago to develop a new contemporary science and technology
wing. Many of the staff were new to projects and nothing of this scale had
been attempted by the Museum before. We knew where we were, we knew where
we wanted to be in April 2000 but in between was a large blank.

I and a close colleague, Ben Gammon, have been working to define the
exhibition content development process for producing visitor centred
exhibitions which offer high quality opportunities for learning. If you're
interested I could send you a discussion paper I wrote for a seminar on
what we've managed to do so far.

The trouble is, each institution is different. So much depends on the way
exhibitions have been developed before, the way people in the teams prefer
to work and what can be learned from past experiences.Temporary exhibitions
also bring their own constraints (mainly time of course). Having said that
reading about our experience as a sort of case study might be of use.

In addition:

Planning for people in museum exhibitions by Kathleen McLean, pub ASTC is
about as good a book as I could find. For me it was a bit light on the
learning side but still really helpful.

Jo Graham
Audience Advocate (Early Years)
Science Museum
London, UK

Jo Graham
Audience Advocate (Early Years)
Wellcome Wing Exhibition Development Team
Science Museum
Exhibition Road
LONDON SW7 2DD
Tel: 0171 938 8128
Fax: 0171 938 8079