The Power of a National Story
- Helena Jones
- Oct 28
- 3 min read
Every nation or large community, tells its story in countless ways - through its landscapes, its people and its shared memory. But national museums and attractions carry that story in one of its most powerful forms: collective experience and culture. They are not just repositories of artefacts; they are living, empathetic reflections of who we are, how we're connected, what we’ve built and what we’ve learned.
This year, we’ve been honoured to help shape two remarkable national exhibitions - each exploring identity, belonging and what it means to be human, from very different perspectives.
For National Museum of Ireland's 'Words on the Wave' (2025) exhibition, our work took us back more than a thousand years - into the world of early medieval Ireland. This exhibition delves into the artistry of illuminated manuscripts and the intellectual and spiritual connections between Irish monks and continental Europe. Our wall wide projected animations within graphics, evidenced the crativity of cultural sharing across boundaries, and our touch interactives explored the depth and breadth of what the early maunscripts may tell us. The exhibition is a celebration of creativity, learning and exchange - a reminder that identity and how it continues to form, is fluid, built on movement, curiosity and collaboration.
The National Holocaust Centre and Museum's 'The Journey' (2025), by contrast is an evocative, immersive story experience, placing visitors into the life, hope, confusion and hurt of a 1938 Kindertransport refugee. This thought-provoking journey explores what happens when home and identity are stripped away. Through experiential audio-visual interpretation, interactive setworks and immersive sound, we help visitors feel that journey, not just see it. Developed for school groups and independent visitors alike, this national experience aims to highlight the confusion, courage and displacement that defined so many lives, and to recognise its resonance in culture today.
The Power of a National Story
Over the years, AY-PE has collaborated with many other national institutions, each with their own vision of what it means to represent a country’s character and voice. From innovation, engineering, films and sports, to migration, music, nation-defining events and priceless cultural collections.
To work with museums of this scale and significance is to engage with living identity. For those involved in exhibition design, contributing to these national spaces is not just a technical or creative challenge, it’s a responsibility. Our role is to translate meaning into feeling. To use projection, sound, film and interaction not simply for spectacle, but to connect visitors with the deeper truths of a story.
For us, emotion isn’t embellishment - it’s the medium through which understanding happens. By designing audio-visual experiences that move, surprise and connect, we help national institutions translate complex subjects into moments of empathy, memory and meaning for their visitor.
Why These Stories Matter
National museums matter because nations are made of stories: collective ones and personal ones. When people stand in front of an artefact, an artwork or an immersive experience and feel something stir, whether that's pride, sorrow, curiosity, hope or belonging - that’s where culture lives.
Whether their names include the word “National” or not, these institutions hold the pulse of an area or country: the questions we ask, the truths we face and the ideas we share. As an example, in late 2025 The Inverness Castle Experience will open, focussing global tourism on the beauty, strength and multi-layered, evocative stories which have helped form and bind the 10,000 sq mile Highlands together. Attractions such as this invite us to experience the past - to 'feel' it - not just preserving memory, but creating empathy.
Empathy changes everything: how we think, how we act and how we connect to each other. That makes every exhibition, every experience and every emotion created, part of an ongoing, ever-evolving act of national, geographic and cultural understanding - finding meaning, together.
Notes: National Museum of Ireland 'Word on the Waves': exhibition design Studio MB, fitout Marcon
National Holocaust Centre and Museum 'The Journey': exhibition design Real Studios, fitout Workhaus, AV hardware Fusion LX
Inverness Castle Experience: exhibition design Mather & Co, fitout Workhaus
Reach out to discuss how our AV digital artistry can help achieve your vision, messages and goals: info@ay-pe.com
