Tenterden Museum

Tenterden Museum bought their first system from InfoAktiv in March 2016.
Our initial objective was to create an interactive system that could be used by visitors who could not easily access all of the rooms in the Museum due to mobility issues. The idea was to create an easy-to-use system providing 360 degree views of the rooms together with photographs and background information on all of the key exhibits, so that a visitor could view everything in the museum from a seat at a screen in the Entrance Room, without needing to tackle any of the stairs! While building this we decided it would be a good idea to include pictures of items in the Museum Store Room which were not on display to the public and to also include some photographs and articles from our digital archives which might be of interest.

Training was completed in a single morning session in December 2015 and the system was built during the Winter months in 2015/6. The initial launch was in March 2016 and since then the system has been updated every month with new material. The Digital Archive now contains over 20gb of amazing material on Local People, Places, Events, Artefacts, Clubs & Societies and Businesses & Institutions. These are delivered as films, oral histories, presentations, documents and pictures in a variety of technical formats which have all been created by museum volunteers, not a single one of whom is a computer expert!

In December 2018 the Museum purchased a second InfoAktiv system to provide interactive technology for a new 20th Century Exhibition. Launched in March 2019, this new exhibition features rooms in a 1960’s home, furnished with items intended to provoke visitors to recall items they/their parents or grandparents had in their homes at that time. To complement the exhibition we also have a set of wall posters featuring key events in Tenterden in each decade of the century, a collection of audio clips with local people recollecting their lives in the period and a new interactive system that allows people to explore digital media featuring each decade. Drawing on our digital archives, we feature items ‘In the News’, Clubs & Society Activities, Local Celebrations of Royal & other Events, Family Stories and Collections of Pictures of Local Places in each decade.

It is difficult to convey how simple it is to create InfoAktiv systems and how little technical knowledge is required. It is similarly difficult to convey how intuitive and obvious it is for users to use the systems simply by touching the screen on the items they want to know more about. You don’t need computer technicians or user instruction manuals – InfoAktiv works in the same way we have all come to expect by using our smart phones and i-pads. The systems switch themselves on before the visitors arrive and off before the Steward goes home. We’ve had almost no problems with our systems since they were installed and the team at InfoAktiv couldn’t be more helpful when contacted. Since we are a tiny country museum entirely run by volunteers, we could not cope with anything that was demanding in terms of time or resources!

These systems are a great hit in our Museum, with our visitors, our volunteer Stewards and our system creators.

– Robin Wilkins, Tenterden Museum, May 2019.