Edufurniture at Espace gallo-romain in Ath, Belgium

Espace gallo-romain is a unique organisation on the map of Belgium. It is located in a nineteenth-century building, the former l’Académie de dessin [Academy of Drawing]. The reason it was created is a very well-preserved ancient Roman wooden barge – a boat used to carry various goods on rivers and canals. The boat was discovered in 1975, and for the next two decades, it was being restored. In 1997, Espace gallo-romain was opened as the boat’s final harbour. It is displayed in a giant showcase and complemented by the permanent exhibition that surrounds it. During a visit to the museum, one can discover the story of the excavation, how the daily life of ancient Romans and Gauls looked in this area. One part of the exhibition was created as a hands-on experience where, among original objects and showcases, one will find board games to play, textiles to touch and even some clothes to try on.

The museum team was particularly interested in different strategies for making museum exhibitions more accessible for different audiences, including visitors with special needs. They were searching for ideas that are sustainable, cost-efficient and as universal as possible. This is why we dedicated our training to drawing the panorama of different facilities available in museums throughout Europe. Inspired by the examples provided during the training and by their own experiences and museum needs, the Espace gallo-romain team asked us to work with them on a piece of educational furniture.

Edufurniture, as we called it, would feature hands-on content available for visitors of all ages and various needs. Our very important assumption was that the edufurniture’s content should correspond well with the exhibition. It should encourage visitors to look at the original objects not only as something they ‘can’t touch’, but also as objects that accompanied people years ago in their daily lives – they used them for cooking, dressing up, transport, etc. Another very important guideline was that edufurniture would be easy to move and fit the museum’s elevator, so that it could be used in different contexts and during regular educational activities.

Edufurniture is a rectangular wooden piece of furniture on wheels that opens on all four sides. Each side is dedicated to another subject:

The boat – inside, one can take into their hands a wooden model of the boat displayed in the museum, copies of pike poles, sail and ropes used on ancient barges. One can also try to master their skills in counting in Roman numbers, thanks to the puzzles provided inside.

Food – inside this part, one can smell and guess the names of local and imported ancient spices available in this area. Thanks to the map, they can try to guess and check the origin of the imported ones. Visitors can also become familiar with some ancient Roman recipes, and the bravest of them – make these dishes at home.

Fashion – Mirror, Mirror… and even three of them. One modern, one metal to see how ancient Romans would have seen them, and one distorting to show how difficult is to create a good mirror. Besides mirrors, this section features some ancient Roman and Gallic clothing to try on and stripes of different dyed textiles (wool, cotton, etc.) used at that time.

Pottery – copies of ancient pots placed in this part are meant to show the differences between dishes used for storing, preparing and serving the food. The visitor’s task here is to create a small museum display: arrange the pottery by purpose and add relevant labels.

The above content is complemented with audiodescriptions and recordings in sign language.

Edufurniture is a result of our cooperation and discussions with the museum team, which allowed us to optimise content. We wanted to avoid overloading the piece of furniture while, at the same time, making it as interesting as possible and usable in various ways for visitors with various needs. With the most challenging part, selection of furniture themes and objects we’ll put inside, we had to deal at the very beginning of the process. Once decided, everything ran smoothly since then.

We tested the Edufurtinture with five representatives of the target audience: two kids aged 10–11 (group 1), one visually impaired adult and two neurodiverse kids aged 10–12 (group 2). We asked all four kids to express their opinions via simple forms. A visually impaired person was giving their comments on the fly, and we’ve made notes.
Kids – their feedback was very positive. They all enjoyed discovering what was hidden behind the furniture’s doors. They found the activities’ level of difficulty well adapted to their skills, except for one, who found them too difficult. However, all young testers were unanimous about the activities’ duration, which they found ‘just right’, and about the need for museums to have more attractions like this.
The visually impaired person was also enthusiastic about the furniture. But our discussion naturally passed to wondering how to even increase the experiences of visually impaired visitors. There are two most important outcomes of that conversation. The first is that it would be useful to add LED lighting inside. The second is that QR codes directing to audio descriptions could be placed in different spots, like keychains that open the door and the bottoms of ceramic pots. This simple procedure would make QR codes more contextually relevant and easier to find.

One of the key takeaways from this cooperation is that, when planning a museum exhibition, we should consider providing visitors with diverse, even relatively ‘simple’ hands-on experiences that allow them to explore through different senses and at different levels of perception. For example, the pottery we’ve decided to place in the Edufurniture family with kids can explore on the level of their purpose, by answering the question: what was it used for? In turn, visually impaired adults can compare types of clay it is made of, decoration or its lack, etc.

This approach supports two important values museums should consider when designing new facilities: sustainability and universal design. The first supports not only ecological features but also teaches museum teams to design long-term strategies for engaging visitors. The latter contributes to thinking about museum education facilities that involve both visitors and the museum employees. Because both groups use them. And this is something that often slips out of thinking when designing similar hands-on experiences. Our collaboration with Espace gallo-romain made us more aware that, when designing, we can’t forget employees’ needs (e.g. that piece of furniture should be easy to transport and fit in an elevator).