The Royal College of Surgeons was preparing to close the Hunterian Museum for five years ahead of a major redisplay.

The brief was to transform a unique arts project into an experience that placed human voices directly alongside the museum's renowned clinical specimen collections, adding an emotional and artistic register to its core story of scientific research.

Narrative Design | Interpretation Planning | Digital Exhibition | Arts Collaboration

Organ transplantation is a technological marvel but even the clinicians who perform it can struggle to understand the patient's perspective. Donors, recipients and families carry stories that medicine seldom makes space for.

Working with photographer and filmmaker Tim Wainwright, sound artist John Wynne and exhibition designer Mark Woods, we transformed the sensitive and revealing audio-visual portraits of transplant patients and donors, into an immersive multimedia installation across three galleries, placing lived experience in intimate dialogue with the clinical specimens that surround it.

We also created a microsite digital exhibition using out Ci platform (www.transplantandlife.uk), an interactive catalogue and permanent record of the project, ensuring the work remained accessible long after the physical installation closed.

Artistic collaboration creates access to scientific research and human experience that conventional museum interpretation cannot achieve, and the sonic portrait technique empowered transplant patients and donors to speak with a candour and depth.

Transplant and Life UK went on to be shown at Science Gallery London's inaugural Spare Parts exhibition, at the Nobel Prize Museum, and has been used as a clinician training resource by the Medical Leadership Academy, Harvard Medical School and the University of New South Wales. The digital catalogue has been shared by clinicians and public around the world and accrued more than 600k page views.

Only narrative can do this, building something with the power and integrity to find audiences far beyond those originally intended.

Client: Royal College of Surgeons Hunterian Museum

TGA: Narrative Design, Interpretation Planning, Digital Engagement

Partners: Tim Wainwright (Photography & Film Making), John Wynne (Sound Art), Mark Woods (Exhibition Design)