Go on an audio tour to the land of mammoths

The Espace Muséal d’Andenne opened its doors in July 2020, amidst the coronavirus crisis. It was born of the merger of the Andenne Ceramics Museum and the Scladina Cave Archaeological Centre. The new institution moved into a former 1930s teacher training college, whose magnificent art deco swimming pool was preserved. The building houses the museum, a library and the city’s tourist office, thus creating greater proximity between the museum and the public.

“This is the first time we’ve created audio guides,” Anne explains. “A few years ago, I visited museums in Oslo and I was particularly impressed by the scenography and the audio guides; by how the content was geared to visitors and to what might interest them personally, beyond the objects on display.”

Emotion is the key to arousing interest, and audio guides are particularly effective in this regard. They allow you to engage with the public, to create a VIP experience, as if visitors were touring an exhibition with a “real” guide without having to read long text panels. While you listen, your eyes can concentrate on the displays: visitors can truly “immerse” themselves in the exhibition. Audio guides drive the narrative: you can create a real story, speak to the emotions and open the mind. It is very likely that visitors will take touching stories home and remember them for a long time. In short, audio guides facilitate access to the exhibition displays; they serve as an intermediary to free the eyes from text, and sustain interest and motivation by offering an immersive experience.

I was in charge of creating the audio guide. We wanted to alternate between stories for ages 7 and upwards, and information that was accessible to a layperson, but without compromising scientific facts. It soon became clear that we needed a dual-narrative approach: a story for an immersive experience, and information by an archaeologist, for authenticity and scientific detail. The scenography was built around a poetic backdrop of watercolours that evokes the mammoth steppe, and which wonderfully complements the experience. We worked with Véronique de Miomandre, a storyteller, and Dominique Bonjean, a prehistoric archaeologist. The challenge was to create a single great journey through the exhibition; to find the right balance between storytelling and scientific information, and the right combination of emotion and science.

‘I worked on the audio tour for four weeks. I first produced a model and a storyboard with the content we wanted to convey, as well as information about the objects we had selected. Véronique de Miomandre then came up with stories about the objects and the content. Storytelling has the power to take you deep into an imaginary land in just a few words. It is incredibly effective. We subsequently added scientific information and worked it in with the storytelling. Dominique Bonjean revised all the text and made sure that no scientific facts were compromised, even in the storytelling sections. The two voice narratives set the pace during the tour. Véronique’s voice alternates with Dominique’s; even though he is not an actor, we decided he would bring greater authenticity. We switched the male and female voices in the Dutch version because we wanted to work with Fred Versonnen, a storyteller from Leuven. As a result, we chose a female voice for the scientific narrative. The soundtrack was enriched during editing, with sounds of wildlife, wind howling across the plains, snippets of voices in the distance.’

The total cost of producing the audio tour was around €2,500. The cost per additional version is obviously lower. The feedback from the public has been excellent, and many visitors listen to the whole audio tour. The tour lasts about 45 minutes.

We are preparing our next temporary exhibition: it will open on 24 June and will be devoted to the secrets and masterpieces of the Chauvet Cave. We are planning to develop an audio guide tour for the general public, for ages seven and upwards, and a more specialised tour for more informed visitors.