Fairy Spotters!

Scarborough Museums Trust 2021

The Brief

We’d visited the Art Gallery in Scarborough on the odd occasion and had very much enjoyed it’s intimate charm with our children so when we were asked whether we’d be interested in creating a companion piece to a new artist-installation – our interest was definitely piqued. How could we take audiences on a journey through the Gallery’s rooms to enhance their engagement with what they are experiencing, whilst respecting the journey of other visitors enjoying those spaces?

What We Did

The artist, Kirsty Harris, had created a trail of discovery throughout the gallery, inspired by the seaside setting and the Victorian fascination with the Cottingley Fairies. Our role was to create a companion event to launch the trail and encourage interaction with the fairy interventions. We created a Fairy Spotters adventure hosted by a Victorian Fairy enthusiast, complete with camera ready to to ‘capture’ evidence of fairy activity. She encouraged audiences to discover Kirsty’s work by setting families challenges to draw, photograph, and create stories about the fairies who inhabit Kirsty’s world!

The Result

We had a wonderful day launching the exhibition in August of 2021 and our sensitive approach to the unique environment in which we were working has led to future collaborations with the Scarborough Museums Trust including Santa in the Sitwell and The Mansion Mystery.