028 REPORTER
Left One of the installations at the Hans Christian Andersen House in Copenhagen, a museum exploring the fairy tale imagination of the 19th century author
Right Esther Dugdale PROFILE Esther Dugdale
From a background in classics to a long and successful career in the museum and experience design industry, Esther Dugdale tells FX her story and how her love of what she does influences her work
WORDS BY EMILY MARTIN
Below An installation from the 100 Journeys exhibit at The Box in Plymouth, telling the stories of all the journeys from the port city that have changed the world
ESTHER DUGDALE IS the creative director of Event, a leading specialist agency for the design of museums, attractions and destinations. Dugdale oversees key projects with the agency including, most recently, the Hong Kong Museum of History and Eden Qingdao – a 42-hectare extension of the Eden Project in China. It has collaborated with Glasgow Life – a charity that delivers cultural, sporting and learning activities on behalf of Glasgow City Council – to transform the city’s flagship museums over a 20-year period; Burrell Collection, Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, and the Riverside Museum. Set up in 1986, Dugdale joined Event
relatively early on in 1994. The business was targeting expos and company events (hence the name) but took an unusual step into
museum design. ‘In the 1980s, museums hadn’t undergone the renaissance that they have the last 30–40 years,’ she explains. ‘We’ve been one of the practices that has pioneered the rejuvenation of museums. It’s a very select group, but it’s growing to include other practices now.’ Dugdale talks about the profession of museum and ‘experience’ designers, something she had not heard of until her mid-to-late twenties. ‘I’m not sure many people know about it now,’ she points out. ‘People just assume that these exhibitions appear either from the museum or the architect and they don’t know that there are these specialist companies that, actually, create the vision for these places.’ For Dugdale, her path to museum design started with an academic degree in classics at
UCL, which Dugdale describes as ‘random’. She then worked overseas running a business doing textile creations for several years. She came back to the UK with two small children and decided to do a design course that would ‘jump start’ her design career. ‘But I didn’t have the luxury of three, four
years for that,’ she says. ‘I did an HND in interior design and I was very lucky that the tutors there were interested in more than just interiors: I was set a project which was to design a room in a museum that would describe the golden mean, which is the classical system of proportions. And, of course, I have a classics degree! It was like a light coming on and I was hooked. I knew what I wanted to do’. With new-found determination, she joined Event in 1994, where she remains today. ‘Because we get the most amazing projects and I’m doing what I love to do,’ adds Dugdale.
Dugdale attributes the expanding work
of transforming museums to growing funding – with investment more often coming from overseas – as well as the way museums get funding opportunities: a large pot of money to do it once and do it well. Whatever Dugdale and her team do, it needs to make a lasting impact. For Event’s clients – whether museum, attraction or other – lies a core experience: the enhancement of something important to people. Rich and meaningful content, married to memorable design, is something Dugdale talks about passionately: ‘It reveals, engages and involves people, and I want to help others live an enriched life. And that’s what we are all here doing: we love these places, and we love these collections. [We have] an opportunity to take the knowledge that others have and turn it into something that a visitor can experience. I love that mix of meaning and design’. In 2014, Event tendered for the Burrell Collection, which it won the master planning contract, with John McAslan + Partners awarded the architecture contract. Event also won the exhibition design contracts. It is a beautiful and calm space, which Dugdale describes as a wonderful example of a place to contemplate.
ANDREW MEREDITH
RASMUS HJORTSHØJ
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