Lyme Regis Museum, Dorset

The Lyme Regis Museum in Dorset has recently undergone a significant refurbishment and opened the Mary Anning Wing. Named for the famous Paleontologist who found all of her important discoveries in Lyme Regis, the wing provides the museum with various services previously lacking space for such as a learning centre for schools, an extended gift shop and improved panoramic views of the Jurassic Coast. This includes an interactive geology gallery which tells Mary Anning’s story and the fossils that she discovered while in the town. The extension was officially opened by the museum’s most well known patron, Sir David Attenborough.

With long time collaborators Smith & Jones providing design, we were brought on board to help with the audio visual installation for the gallery. This included three of our 22″ touchscreens with our off-the-shelf software presenting various content. One of these touchscreens was installed into a bespoke oak unit and contains three puzzles via TouchPuzzle, where visitors can put together puzzles of fossils that Anning discovered. The touchscreen also links to a fossil finder website where visitors can browse and search for more information on different types of fossils, along with two informative videos. Visitors choose between the available interactive options via the Homepage application.

The remaining touchscreens are in two sets of drawers, here visitors can open the drawers and browse through the range of fossils as well as view the 22″ Touchscreens. These utilise VideoShowreel and PageTurn which shares digitised letters that Anning had written alongside letters that had been sent to her in correspondence. Next to this, we also installed a bespoke video unit that is operated by buttons and works with a plastic handset. The video unit features eight audio extracts that discuss moments in Anning’s life and clips read from her own letters by a number of famous voices including Tracy Chevalier, Sir David Attenborough, Oliver Ford Davies and Clemmie Reynolds.

The museum refurbishment has provided modernisation and helped preseve Anning’s discoveries for future generations.