The talk will also look at the interpreter’s role in capturing people’s attention and imagination in an increasingly ‘loud’ world. As media outputs, from gaming to television, becomes increasingly interactive and immersive, interpreters must create experiences that cannot be found elsewhere. Experiences that evoke moments of awe, that address complex and contested narratives, that tell the untold and that take audiences on epic narrative journeys.

All this demands new ways of thinking about interpretation – a paradigm shift in how we interpret. The talk concludes with a manifesto advocating new models of practice, recognising the increasingly promiscuous discipline that is interpretation.

ERIC LANGHAM
Eric is internationally recognised as a planner of new museums and cultural projects. He oversees all of Barker Langham’s creative and visitor experience work, and his expertise encompasses the interpretive direction and curation of ground-breaking cultural projects across the globe. Eric’s distinctive approach to interpretation explores the interfaces between narratives, space, scale and time.

Eric has provided creative and curatorial direction for national museums, World Heritage Sites and cultural giga-projects in Europe, Asia and North America. His global portfolio includes creative visioning for major new institutions including the National Museum of Qatar, the House of European History in Brussels, the United Kingdom Holocaust Memorial and the Grand Canal Museum in China. He also advises established institutions such as the Natural History Museum London and the Museum of London, and he sits on the Board for National Gallery X – a pioneering initiative exploring the future of museums and technology.

His work in the Middle East includes directing the interpretive development for Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque, the Oman Across Ages Museum, three major pavilions for Expo 2020 Dubai, Al Shindagha Museum in Dubai, AlUla in Saudi Arabia and several cultural assets associated with the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Al Ain.

Eric has lectured and published extensively on curation and museum masterplanning, including at the World Archaeology Conference, UNESCO World Heritage Conference, Museum Ethnographers Conference and the Building Museums Symposium. He is a Trustee of the Migration Museum, a Trustee and Former Commissioning Editor for the Association for Heritage Interpretation, a Fellow of the Museums Association, an Associate Fellow at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter, and a mentor and expert advisor to UK’s National Lottery Heritage Fund.