THE WORKHOUSE

CLIENT : THE NATIONAL TRUST

Even just the main building at the Workhouse, Southwell is a complicated visitor experience with five separate staircases and walled yards designed to keep ‘classes’ of pauper apart. As the National Trust expanded the site to include the later Firbeck Infirmary building, they commissioned us to re-imagine the whole site. We developed an installation across 48 rooms, in some creating replicas of austere furniture and props to present pauper stories, and in others using exhibition techniques to provide context or vary the pace. Across the whole site, an innovative ‘Digital Label’ strips content off the walls and puts it in visitors’ hands, encouraging them to explore and in many cases driving home the horror of what they are seeing. A centrepiece AV in the Board Room, where pauper lives were decided upon by a committee of dignitaries, sees a seemingly ordinary oak table - no wires, no projectors - spring to life, words shining through the wood accompanying the awful story of poor Henry Stanley, classified as an ‘idiot from birth’, and thrown on the mercy of the parish after the death of his mother.