Designing Vennels: Perth’s Little Streets

Niamh Finlay, Exhibitions Assistant writes about the creative process behind designing the latest exhibition at Perth Museum, Vennels: Perth’s Little Streets, and the unique approach we took to bring the history and mystery of the vennels to life in-gallery.

When approaching an exhibition design, I always start by thinking about people and their journey through the space, how we can take a room and transform it into a refreshed and exciting experience worth making the trip to visit. We have seen moves towards more immersive experiences across the museum sector and bigger differentiations between shows, it often feels like a Cinderella moment when we shift from one gallery layout to another!

We have our objects, and the stories we want to tell within the space, but deciding on layout, mood and flow is a key part of forming any exhibition. With Vennels: Perth’s Little Streets there were many threads to explore, as the historical medieval city and crafts legacy of the vennels provided ample inspiration. I didn’t want to go down the traditional faux-street that we have seen in museums for many years, as with the contemporary art element of the exhibition it warranted something more modern, colourful, and bright than a cobbled, brown-ish-grey-ish street scene.

When you think of vennels, which are the small alleyways connecting the city centre of Perth, they are not always the most aesthetic of places. Rather than try to emulate the dark enclosure of a city street I instead chose to create a more open and artistically inspired space. In this exhibition we experimented for the first time with height in the gallery design, creating tall wall sections that break up the space forming large angular points for visitors to weave their way around.

Cognitive psychology shows us that people don’t remember every moment when visiting an exhibition – but they do remember emotional peaks and transitions. Therefore, by giving levels of surprise, atmosphere, and curiosity you encourage visitors to move meaningfully through a space and remember their experience more in the round.

I wanted to create a more linear and chronological route through the first section of the gallery, as this was looking at the historical medieval context of the vennels and the archaeology discovered beneath them, it made sense to keep the narrative simple, while still using angular sightlines, clean lines and transparent wall sections to draw your eye and lead you round the exhibition space.

Creating Gallery 2

In Gallery 2 the approach was different, while creating dramatic angular shapes and the sensation of walking through a streetscape, the layout is more free-flowing, so visitors can explore in any direction or order the stories behind the five new public art commissions inspired by the vennels. I created this design around visitor comfort and wanted to create adequate room for people to dwell and watch the short film interview segments with artists, while perusing their creative materials, sketches, and ephemera. The inspiration for this gallery was the idea of unseen, underneath and behind the scenes and that was our approach to object selection with each of the artists, looking to find unexpected objects, materials, practice pieces, or stories to share.

In our graphic design we went with a cobble motif on white and semi-transparent backgrounds, to give a refreshed take on the classic street cobble associated with vennels and historic alleyways. We wanted the design to be minimal but have big impact, and the cobble was a great way to play with perspective, colour, and size to create moments of drama in the space and a hook for eye-catching exhibition marketing.

I was inspired by a road map of the City and wanted to take these complex arteries of the vennel street system and simplify them, so was interested in using black and white thick, angled lines to emphasise this, this led to the simplified colour palette and pops of colour that you see in the gallery. Using white backgrounds and black text provides an added level of accessibility as well as emphasising the modern and minimalist aesthetic of the exhibition.

The exhibition design process for Vennels: Perth’s Little Streets was unique, and we managed to capture the feeling of walking through a city street in an exciting and unexpected way, it was a fun challenge for the whole exhibitions team.

Vennels: Perth’s Little Streets is open now at Perth Museum, 6^th September 2026. The exhibition was developed in collaboration with Perth UNESCO City of Craft and Folk Art and Perth & Kinross Council’s Place Development Team.