Exhibition designer specialist Mather & Co has been appointed to design an exhibition in North Uist for Sealladh Hiort – St Kilda Viewpoint, part of the Outer Hebrides.
The Wilmslow-based multi-disciplinary design company has over twenty-five years’ experience in creating leading exhibitions, museums, and visitor attractions. Work includes big-name attractions such as Downton Abbey: The Exhibition, Silverstone Museum, Shrewsbury Flaxmill Maltings, Gretna Green Experience, The R&A World Golf Museum and The Royal Mint Experience.
Malissa Geersing, senior 3D designer at Mather & Co, said: “The St Kilda Viewpoint project is an incredible opportunity to interpret the spectacular landscape, wildlife, and community of this unique island. By bringing together engaging interpretative techniques that bridge the distance to the islands, for those unable to undertake the voyage and allow the story of its landscape and its community to unfold, visitors will be amazed by what they experience.”
St Kilda is the UK’s only dual UNESCO World Heritage Site and is home to nearly one million seabirds, including the UK’s largest colony of Atlantic puffins.
Sealladh Hiort, the new St Kilda Viewpoint Centre, will offer visitors the opportunity to discover the story of St Kilda and the surrounding Hebridean islands. As one of three proposed centres along the length of the Outer Hebrides, known as Slighe Hiort (the St Kilda Trail), the North Uist facility will take visitors on a journey through an exhibition inspired by the dramatic landscape of impressive cliffs and underwater scenery of St Kilda and other islands in the Hebrides.
The viewpoint centre will cover the archipelago’s natural history, its context in relation to other offshore Hebridean islands which had very similar socio-economic histories, and the role of St Kilda in the modern world. Subjects covered in the exhibition include island formation, settlement, adaptation, evacuation, and modern day St Kilda.
Sensory is at the forefront of Mather & Co’s thinking – by making people experience the island, its history and nature through immersing them in audio-visual and sensory elements – including 360-degree views over the landscape.
Chair of Sealladh Hiort, Alasdair MacEachen, said: “We are delighted with the exhibition design that the team at Mather & Co have produced for us. The subject of St Kilda is a challenging one to interpret – especially in this particular context when the Viewpoint Centre is one of three Slighe Hiort projects located across the Outer Hebrides where each has to keep to a limited range of pre-agreed topics. Despite this, the Mather & Co design far exceeds our original expectations, and we are confident that when opened it will provide an exciting new facility for future island visitors.”
