Material Tales

MATERIAL TALES is a new touring exhibition from the Design Museum, London. The exhibition offers an exploration into the world of materials, taking visitors on a journey through their origins, uses, and evolution. The overall ambition is to provide visitors with a greater degree of material literacy, showcasing the materials that have defined modern life and debating how we might learn to make better use of them in future.

MATERIAL TALES features approximately 80 objects, as well as a wealth of images, film and process material. Exhibits fall under three categories:

• objects from the Design Museum Collection,
• contextual material to explain the process behind the finished product, and
• recent work by contemporary designers to showcase the direction that material design is taking.

The exhibition has a strong educational component and includes a Learning package with lesson plans and activities, as well as a Research in Action strand exploring contemporary material thinking.

As a subject with broad international relevance, the exhibition is ideally suited to localised adaptation by museums and can act as a framework through which to showcase design, applied art, anthropological, science or fine art collections in a contemporary and topical way.
(Approx size c.500m2, scaleable)