Vivid text to set the scene in each gallery
Among the glittering buildings in London Docklands’ commercial landscape, a row of the original riverside warehouses still stands, solid in warm brick. One is now the Museum of London Docklands, offering welcoming, human-scale tales while all around seems focused on cold, hard cash.
In 2018 I had the chance to reimagine and rewrite the gallery introduction panels for a family audience. The museum was successfully reaching these visitors with its activities, temporary exhibitions and cafe. Although there was some text that had already been renewed – notably the powerful gallery Sugar and Slavery which was designed for an older audience – some felt dated and academic. The vivid stories of lives and goods in the docks were at risk of being lost.
With the new brief to make the stories come to life for families, I looked for ways to take visitors through a timeline in which fortunes rose and fell, goods came and went, and London’s people made a living in and around the docks. As ever, the idea was to provide text that adults in the group could read out loud.
I agreed to develop a couple of styles of text, both aimed at putting visitors right in the action of the warehouse and docks, and using active language and storytelling techniques. The museum team was interested in seeing an Ekarv-influenced version, and experimenting with using the present tense. Here are two styles I provided:
Warehouse of the world (style 1)
Oranges and pineapples, sugar and spices
tea, coffee and cocoa.
It’s now 1880, and this warehouse is stuffed.
Every floor groans with barrels and crates,
cargoes of foods and medicines, casks of wine and spirits
loads of timber and bales of cloth, luxury furs and leathers.
But why is everything here in the docks,
filling hundreds of sheds and storehouses from floor to ceiling?
It’s all because business is booming.
London is now the centre of the global trade network
and this port is the busiest in the British Empire.
Merchants store their goods here before selling them on.
This is the warehouse of the world.
Warehouse of the world (style 2)
Can you smell coffee? Or the scent of cinnamon?
It’s now 1880, and the wooden floors of this warehouse
are creaking with barrels, crates and chests.
You can see sacks of sugar and spices, tea, coffee and cocoa
cargoes of meat and medicines, casks of wine and spirits
loads of timber and bales of cloth, luxury furs and leathers.
But why is everything here in the docks,
filling hundreds of sheds and storehouses from floor to ceiling?
It’s all because business is booming.
London is now the centre of the global trade network
and this port is the busiest in the British Empire.
Merchants store their goods here before selling them on.
This is the warehouse of the world.
Although both versions had their supporters, the team decided to go with style 2, and so I drafted the final text based on this approach.
Along with the physical-ness of the building itself was the chance to think about what working people might have done here, hefting sacks or turning a treadwheel. Woodcut-style illustrations on each panel gave clues.
There were opportunities to talk about the flavours and smells of the goods that would have packed the floors of this building, a warehouse of the world.
After chapters exploring 20th-century change, the story concluded with the docklands regeneration. It is always tricky to intervene in an existing museum with new interpretation, but in this case it felt as if the new panels would provide a backbone to help visitors navigate the story of an area of London with such significance.
“You have helped us so much with this and the panels look lovely! Thank you so very much.”