In a £30 million building designed by Wilkinson Eyre Architects, the National Waterfront Museum in Swansea opened its doors to the public in October 2005. Celebrating Wales and its industrial heritage, the museum uses more than 100 audio-visual exhibits, 36 state-of-the-art interactive displays, and hundreds of artefacts to tell the story of Welsh industrialization through the eyes and words of the people who were there.

Fifteen themed display areas allow visitors to the Museum to explore the impact of the Industrial Revolution on people’s lives, then and now.

Working in close partnership with exhibition designers Land Design, multimedia and interactive agency Newangle took the role of lead creative and project management company for all the audiovisual productions at the Museum. It headed up a team of companies working on the exhibits, including ISO and Studiosimple.

This is an immersive space with projections from wall to ceiling. In the centre there is a shop counter with a modern travelator, a conveyor belt for shopping goods.

We have used a real travelator but the objects are digital projections. As the visitor selects an object it comes into their station, but as it does so it goes through various time periods – from the eighteenth century right up to a modern department store.

The interactivity with the objects lets you compare what they cost in respect to what wages were earned. For example, if you select a loaf of bread it will tell you that in the eighteenth century this cost ten percent of your daily wage if you were a miner.