Flying Scotsman
Transcript of Exhibition Progress Film: Joe Savage explains the Creative Team's input into the new exhibition.
DESCRIPTION: In the following video Joe Savage, Exhibition Developer at the National Railway Museum, York, describes his work in the preparation of the content for The Flying Scotsman Story exhibition. The film contains footage of Joe researching content for the exhibition, Jim Stevenson and John Bennett, both retired dining car stewards, reminiscing, and GNER Customer Service crew.
JOE SAVAGE: My name is Joe Savage and I am an Exhibition Developer. Alongside the creative team here at the National Railway Museum, I have been helping to prepare the content for The Flying Scotsman Story.
The content team do everything from deciding the concept of the exhibition, through to picture research, object selection, we create the storyboard for interactives, we help edit film for audio visuals, right through to writing text for the exhibition and liaising with designers to actually get it installed.
One of the things that has made this project such a pleasurable experience is the huge amount of public support we have had. I personally have had about 80 letters from members of the public who have given us all sorts of information that we wouldn’t otherwise get in books. These range from the incredible, like a letter from a gentleman who told us that when doing some maintenance work on the Flying Scotsman tender they drained it and found three bucketsful of fish, to the exciting, like a letter from a man who went out on Flying Scotsman on his first trip out on the main line as a novice fireman.
These letters have helped us create one of the best exhibits in the display. Two retired stewards who have worked on the East Coast Main Line for a combined span of about fifty years, wrote to us to tell us what it was like to work in dining cars. We managed to film them on board a GNER train reminiscing about their time in the dining cars.
The exhibition is not just about the locomotive, it is also about the Flying Scotsman passenger service and we have brought the story up to date by running on the route of the Flying Scotsman with a GNER crew. We have filmed a day in the life story, following them around all day and really getting involved in their day-to-day work.
The first step for any exhibition is to work out what your audience is. For us we know that we have a large family audience but for the Flying Scotsman exhibition we also knew that we had a large fan base that has a very detailed knowledge of the locomotive. So for the creative team that meant that we had to create a fun and exciting exhibition, that also has enough layers to keep the most dedicated enthusiast happy.
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