The purpleSTARS advisory group launched a forthcoming project with the Glenside Hospital Museum in Bristol with a kick-off planning session earlier this week. Stella Man, who runs the museum, visited Rix Research & Media at UEL for the meeting, which scoped out how between January and September 2018 the purpleSTARS Archive & Sensory Teams will visit Glenside and train a team of 5 local people with learning disabilities to work with the Rix Wiki software to make a sensory expedition trail of the museum. This work also plans to feature an App that will be made available to Museum visitors.

purpleSTARS brings together a group of artists and technologists with and without learning difficulties/disabilities to transform museum experiences and make them really inclusive. They use sensory and digital media to create alternative interpretations of museum collections.

The purpleSTARS Archive Team are part of the ‘Access All Areas’ theatre group. They have become Wiki experts over the course of working on a number of Rix Research projects, all connected to museums and archiving.

Rix Research are delighted to be working once again with the University of Reading to extend the benefits of the award-winning AHRC funded ‘Sensory Objects’ project, through the 1 year Sensory Objects Enterprise 2017/18 AHRC follow on funding grant. The purpleSTARS enterprise are the start-up enterprise that has been created with the help of this grant. The project with Glenside Hospital Museum is one of the purpleSTARS first archiving and sensory commissions.

Read our account of the purpleSTARS enterprise project HERE, or visit the purpleSTARS or Sensory Objects website for further information, or to commission the purpleSTARS to make a sensory expedition to your museum.