'Experience is not what happens to you. It is what you do with what happens to you'.
Aldous Huxley
In 1995, Ann Scroope was commissioned to design the galleries at the Kilmainham Gaol Museum, Dublin, one of the largest projects in the state at that time. The design won six awards and set a new standard in heritage interpretation. Scroope Design went on to be the first independant design company commissioned to design the galleries for the first new National Museum of Ireland.
Ann Scroope, Creative Director, MA Heritage and Interpretation, BDes InDes.
I bring over thirty years international experience, knowledge and industry insights in visitor engagement strategies to all our projects. I assemble and lead large multidisciplinary design teams, contributing to highly iterative and collaborative environments with cultural leaders and experts. I inspire, guide and motivate clients and colleagues to re-envisioning concepts of the visitor encounter.
I believe great interpretation encourages and enables conversation, participation and collaboration.
It is meaningful, purposeful and shapes our understanding.
We create narrative environments; placemaking for dialogue, engagement, imagination and participation.
• Consultancy - reviews of the existing visitor experience, mentoring workshops, site studies
• Interpretative planning - visitor engagement, narrative framing, content structures, project tasks and pathway
• Interpretative design - fusing hermeneutics, modalities and design semiotics
• Project and contracts management - technical and material specifications, programming and budget control
Ann was awarded the Professor Hooper-Greenhill prize for outstanding research relating to museum learning, communication and visitor studies by the University of Leicester. She is a regular contributor to university programmes, conferences and museum publications, and continues to research and re-envisage cultural interpretation through design of the narrative environment.
I regard Ann as in the forefront of Irish specialist museum designers. She possesses high visual and emotional intelligence in reaching for solutions and in dealing with clients. She has a strong commitment to making exhibitions work for a diverse public.
Dr. Michael Ryan, Chester Beatty Library, Dublin.
Her responses are specific, nuanced and bespoke to the particular story she is helping us to tell. There is a thoughtfulness and an elegance about her work which I have not found in the work of some other museum designers and interpretative planners.
Brian Crowley, Curator Manager, Pearse museum
Scroope Design speedily grasped the essentials of our history and our values and used them to suggest novel ways we might project ourselves. Ann assembled the necessary team. What emerged was, in my view, a tremendously dynamic and visually exciting proposal.
Peter Murtagh, Managing Editor, The Irish Times.
