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BMAG is the largest civic museum in the country, with an unrivalled collection of art and historic artefacts including the Staffordshire Hoard and the Pre-Raphaelites collection. Housed in a Grade II* listed building in the heart of the city, it houses over 40 separate galleries across two buildings along a complex arrangement of spaces.

The Trust is undergoing a major refurbishment to update the building. To coincide with this, BMAG are also undergoing a major restructuring of all of its galleries. Its emphasis is to based the collection around 100 stories. New research in museum design states that visitors absorb more information based around human narratives (stories) – using the artefacts in a museum’s collection to reveal aspects of the main protagonists or events in that story.

We use this conceptual idea as a design driver for our students, taking five of these stories and developing display structures to exhibit the artefacts to retell the stories to a public audience. Part of the process includes engagement with various community members and documenting oral histories to help enrich the design process.