Kate Hulme

Stories are a really important way for children (and all of us, for that matter) to escape to somewhere exciting, funny or moving. When we read, it transports us right into the heart of a story and makes us feel like it’s somehow just ours. Not all children are fortunate enough to have safe spaces…

A few of my top writing tips when creating exhibition text: 1.    Step away from the idea that you need to put in more detail as you move down the graphics hierarchy from intro text to object labels. It makes intuitive sense, but it’s not actually how people behave in museums. It works much better to…

There are a lot of activity, interpretation and design briefs with a strong co-creation element at the moment – here are my top co-creation tips:·     Give the start a lot of unpressured time – people in creative jobs are used to jumping on an idea and running with it so we can expect the same of…

Many museums have teenagers and the under-25s on their list of priority audiences, but all too often it’s assumed that this group are best engaged through digital interaction. We’d challenge that assumption. For the under-25s, the internet, and all the sophisticated digital world-building that comes with it, is like electricity and running water. It’s just…

I spent six hours at our local primary school last week, selling in the career of museum design. They had talks from nurses, doctors, coders, recruitment consultants… and then I walked in with a maquette of a mammoth under my arm and talked about daydreaming for a living. I set them a brief to create…

I just got back from a week in the beautiful Hebrides consulting with local community groups on early plans for the new Iolaire Centre. We met around a hundred islanders in 48 hours (and between us bought 5 pieces of knitwear – it was COLD). Meeting people and trying to tease out in my head…

Recently I went to the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides for the final presentation of this stage of design, interpretation and advisory work for the island’s new Iolaire Centre (an Event project, partnering with Lateral North on local consultations). It’s such a privilege to work on a project from the earliest planning stage,…

An inspiring first day at EMYA 2025 – I very much enjoyed hearing Taina Máret Pieski, Director of the Sámi Museum Siida, talking about the museum’s passion for telling the story of the Sámi by the Sámi, but also developing processes that are authentically of and for the Sámi. I wonder how, as a design…