How do you leave your mark without leaving a mark?
Since 2010, Gallery 37 has engaged young people (aged 14 – 19), in an array of creative activities and fostered a number of colourful collaborations with like-minded individuals. The groups are supported by a team of professionals (artists, musicians, performers and facilitators), who help them hone their creative skills, challenge ideas and work toward a collective theme.
Part of our funding guidelines this year, supported by our partners the Heritage Lottery Fund was to leave a legacy of Impact Arts’ Gallery 37 at the National Museum Scotland. This presented a unique challenge as we were unable to leave anything physically within the museum collections.
It seemed natural to me to achieve this aim digitally and we decided to use a technique known as augmented reality (AR), by overlaying digital content in a physical space. Our group of young people had drawn inspiration from the Scotland: A Changing Nation gallery so we chose this as the location for our Gallery 37 AR experience.
Each of our groups identified one item that they drew some form of inspiration from and we used these items as the triggers for our AR experience. Throughout the program we captured video and photographs and using our AR trail this content can be viewed both online and within the actual space that inspired the work.
A group of young people who attended Gallery 37 are continuing to work with Impact Arts and the National Museum of Scotland on Monday afternoons until the end of November. This is in partnership with the National Museums Scotland and they will be working on a heritage based visual arts project.
We had an amazing four weeks at the museum this year and if you’d like to view our trail at the National Museum of Scotland you’ll find our printed instructions at the Info Zone, or, if you can’t wait, then you can watch our videos right now on our YouTube channel.
Impact Arts are very proud of the work the young people have produced and if you would like more information on this project or any of the other projects we run visit our website.
+ Impact Arts: Gallery 37 at the National Museums of Scotland