It must be every exhibition designer’s dream to be asked to make an exhibit for The Science Museum. This giant ‘Thinking Cap’ exhibition model was developed and built at Amalgam based on Nick Park’s idea for the show stopping finale to the ‘Wallace and Gromit Present a World of Cracking Ideas’ exhibition. The size 97 stomping boots drive the ‘cap’ up and down while it ‘processes’ ideas, shooting wearable paper caps from its mouth for visitors to take home.
Amalgam’s multi-talented Exhibition team worked round the clock to build ‘The Workshop Zone’ of the show, which included a pair of three meter tall vertical scrolling graphic displays, a wind-up desk workbench, and the ‘Ideas Safe’ vault room designed to ‘protect’ ideas. Having designed and built the exhibits in our Bristol workshops the team relocated to The Science Museum to finally install and commission the pieces on-site.
The exhibition opened at The Science Museum in London, running from 28th of March through to 1st of November 2009. Then travelled to The Glasgow Science Centre and The Life Science Centre in Newcastle. Since then the Thinking Cap exhibition model has travelled with the exhibition to Australia, and has been running continuously for three years with, at last count, 545, 189 visitors and NO technical hitches! Credit must be given to the Amalgam engineers and Display team for their technical wizardry in creating this loveable monster.
The original, animated concept is still in use as a web graphic on the Cracking Ideas website which can be visited by clicking the link.
That’s Grand.
Wallace
