This project involved a review of all interpretation on site. I worked with the staff at the property and NTS’s in-house designer Liz Clark (now of Lark Creative) to refresh welcome interpretation at the car park, all interpretation within the gardens, and information cards within the rooms inside the castle.
The high quality room cards made a huge difference to visitor engagement within the castle. We introduced some oral history testimony to bring a richness and diversity of voice within the text. We introduced in-focus room cards to enable the stories of the Castle’s painted ceilings to come through, and had mirrors made so that visitors could look at them without straining their necks!
We also took the opportunity to create a children’s layer of interpretation making use of the stories and quirky characters of the Nine Nobles and the Muses – see models above. These related to a paper based trail which involved finding the figuirines then a spot-the-difference challenge encouraging them to look closely at the ceilings themselves.
Crathes is famous for its gardens, but in terms of what is most visually unique, the renaissance painted ceilings are something you will not see anywhere else in the world, and so quite early on it was agreed that elements of these would be integrated strongly within any new design aesthetic.
Design – Liz Clark of Lark Creative
Production – Eastern Photocolour (indoor) and Signergy (outdoor)
