Projects 2012
Ghosts in the Garden
by Steve Poole, Holburne Museum and Splash and Ripple
Sydney Gardens in Bath were developed as a Georgian pleasure garden, but today the swingboats, labyrinth and elaborate ‘Cosmorama’ are all gone. This project takes audiences on an epic journey of rediscovery, pitching visitors headlong into the past.
It will design and create a visitor experience that will reunite the physical space of the modern park with its own past as a pleasure garden and with the Holburne museum, its former entry-point, tearoom and ‘hotel’.
The Gardens will be populated with a number of interactive Georgian ‘ghosts’, drawn from all social classes and modeled as far as possible upon historically researched ‘real’ characters, built through careful archival research.
Part game, part story, part immersive sound scape (accessed via a special 'Georgian Listening Device'), present-day visitors will meet and interact with real characters from the Gardens' heyday, in a unique experience where history and imaginative play meet head-on.