The STAM is the city museum of Ghent (Belgium), which has been telling the story of Ghent since October 2010 at the old Bijloke site. You can discover the many layers of Ghent, a contemporary city with an ancient history. The STAM is housed in the historic Bijloke abbey, with multiple classified spaces such as the medieval abbey refectory.
In 2020, the STAM celebrated its tenth anniversary. It was time for a rejuvenation of the permanent collection of the Ghent City Museum. In this new permanent exhibition, you see and feel the city grow and change shape, thanks to numerous technological interventions and storytelling. 'The Story of Ghent' takes you along a chronological multimedia course of objects that make you experience the developments and growth of Ghent. But the STAM goes beyond Ghent alone and also wonders what makes a city a city, in projects and temporary exhibitions.
For the city museum, it was important to preserve authentic historical spaces and clearly establish the link with the city's development. That's why you'll find projections integrated into the architecture of various medieval spaces in the building. Additionally, the aim was to remove as many dull labels and flat text boards from the collection pieces as possible and avoid them in the renewed setup. Through touch applications on seamlessly integrated touch screens, visitors get the story behind each object and experience how Ghent has developed up to today.
The museum set a clear goal to incorporate more existing historical documents into a digital presentation to show the city's evolution at a glance. The presentation had to be both summary and accessible. To achieve this, digital models were developed where visitors can follow animations of changing cityscapes, occupations, arrivals and departures of art objects, infographics, etc., through engaging storytelling for the necessary context.
CREATE.eu developed the interactive software and installed the AV hardware. For this project, we collaborated with the museum team, scenographer Kinkorn, and Morrow for design and illustration.
Because the museum is housed in a historic abbey monument, extra caution was taken. Our team of hardware integrators conducted sufficient preliminary studies and on-site tests to carry out the hardware integration into the scenography perfectly tailored and with respect for the monument.
