Profile
Esther Dugdale, creative director of Event, on how her love of what she does influences her work
Words by Emily Martin
ESTHER DUGDALE IS the creative director of Event, a leading specialist agency for the design of museums, attractions and destinations. Dugdale oversees key projects with the agency including, most recently, the Hong Kong Museum of History and Eden Qingdao – a 42-hectare extension of the Eden Project in China. It has collaborated with Glasgow Life – a charity that delivers cultural, sporting and learning activities on behalf of Glasgow City Council – to transform the city’s flagship museums over a 20-year period; Burrell Collection, Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, and the Riverside Museum.
One of the installations at the Hans Christian Andersen House in Copenhagen, a museum exploring the fairy tale imagination of the 19th century author. Image Credit: RASMUS HJORTSHØJ
Set up in 1986, Dugdale joined Event relatively early on in 1994. The business was targeting expos and company events (hence the name) but took an unusual step into museum design. ‘In the 1980s, museums hadn’t undergone the renaissance that they have the last 30–40 years,’ she explains. ‘We’ve been one of the practices that has pioneered the rejuvenation of museums. It’s a very select group, but it’s growing to include other practices now.’
Dugdale talks about the profession of museum and ‘experience’ designers, something she had not heard of until her mid-to-late twenties. ‘I’m not sure many people know about it now,’ she points out. ‘People just assume that these exhibitions appear either from the museum or the architect and they don’t know that there are these specialist companies that, actually, create the vision for these places.’
Esther Dugdale
For Dugdale, her path to museum design started with an academic degree in classics at UCL, which Dugdale describes as ‘random’. She then worked overseas running a business doing textile creations for several years. She came back to the UK with two small children and decided to do a design course that would ‘jump start’ her design career.
This image The suspended ‘Infinite Velodrome’ exhibit at Glasgow’s Riverside Museum. Image Credit: HUFTON + CROW
‘But I didn’t have the luxury of three, four years for that,’ she says. ‘I did an HND in interior design and I was very lucky that the tutors there were interested in more than just interiors: I was set a project which was to design a room in a museum that would describe the golden mean, which is the classical system of proportions. And, of course, I have a classics degree! It was like a light coming on and I was hooked. I knew what I wanted to do’. With new-found determination, she joined Event in 1994, where she remains today. ‘Because we get the most amazing projects and I’m doing what I love to do,’ adds Dugdale.
Dugdale attributes the expanding work of transforming museums to growing funding – with investment more often coming from overseas – as well as the way museums get funding opportunities: a large pot of money to do it once and do it well. Whatever Dugdale and her team do, it needs to make a lasting impact.
Sophie Cave’s Floating Heads installation at the Kelingrove Art Gallery and Museum takes viewers through a spectrum of human facial expressions
For Event’s clients – whether museum, attraction or other – lies a core experience: the enhancement of something important to people. Rich and meaningful content, married to memorable design, is something Dugdale talks about passionately: ‘It reveals, engages and involves people, and I want to help others live an enriched life. And that’s what we are all here doing: we love these places, and we love these collections. [We have] an opportunity to take the knowledge that others have and turn it into something that a visitor can experience. I love that mix of meaning and design’.
In 2014, Event tendered for the Burrell Collection, which it won the master planning contract, with John McAslan + Partners awarded the architecture contract. Event also won the exhibition design contracts. It is a beautiful and calm space, which Dugdale describes as a wonderful example of a place to contemplate.
Eden Project Qingdao was the first Eden Project outside of Cornwall, UK, and was themed around water as the lifeblood of nature, culture and civilisation
‘I think there is synergy between what we are interested in and what Glasgow Life is interested in,’ she says. ‘And I think this is behind our success in winning the three projects, one after the other.’ Event had previously won, also by tender to Glasgow Life, Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum and the Riverside Museum. ‘It’s been a major part of my career as I have been involved in all three of the projects, but that cultural regeneration of the city; their goals for transformation and story-based displays, unapologetic accessibility, sustainability and flexibility is all close to our hearts.’
But what future lies for experience? While creating these magnificent places, designed around physical being and engagement within a space, place or environment, the rise of a virtual world dawns – partly because of a pandemic.
It is something Dugdale thinks about too, but she believes that the answer is a long while off yet. ‘I’m interested to see over the next 15–20 years to see how [Covid-19] has impacted us. When people don’t move around, how can museums get in front of people [with an experience that is] meaningful and not just digital collections which people can lose themselves in?’
