Free Auckland Museum exhibition Volume receives international and local awards and nears 200,000 visits

Auckland Museum’s free Volume: Making Music in Aotearoa exhibition has been named an Exhibition Media Award winner for its innovative blend of culture and technology at the international 2017 GLAMi Awards, part of the Museums and the Web Conference in Cleveland, Ohio.

The GLAMi Awards celebrate the best innovations in the cultural sector worldwide, and the winners were selected by an international committee of judges from international institutions.

Auckland Museum on Thursday received the FINZ 2017 Excellence in Sponsorship Award from the Fundraising Institute of New Zealand (FINZ) for the Museum’s sponsorship relationship with Spark and Volume: Making Music in Aotearoa, Amplified by Spark.

And Volume has just been announced as a finalist for Exhibition Excellence – Social History at the ServiceIQ 2017 New Zealand Museum Awards.

These awards acknowledge the innovative sponsorship from Spark which created an All Access Pass for Volume, bringing visitors closer to the exhibition stories and music by personalising their experiences in 14 interactive stations.  Visitors can access exclusive content like music clips and documentaries, put themselves onto the cover of Rip it Up magazine; or star in their own music video.

Spark’s General Manager Customer & Marketing Clive Ormerod says, “It was awesome to hear from visitors to Volume that the digital technology supplied by Spark allowed them to experience the exhibition content in a really personal way.  So many people who made use of the All Access Pass and took away a collection of self-curated content from the exhibition, said they kept learning and reliving the experience after leaving the exhibition.”

Closing in just one week on Sunday May 21st, the popular, free exhibition has seen around 200,000 visitors enjoy its 200 objects -costumes, instruments, handwritten lyrics and images generously loaned by some of our best loved musicians.

The interactive spaces include a recording studio where visitors can produce a song by music legend Che Fu; a DJ booth where you can mix beats to tracks by artists like Ladi6, P-Money, and Scribe; an authentic 1980s record store; a replica of a 1970s pub venue where you can learn to play Dragon’s iconic hit ‘Rain’ and dance along with go-go girls on the set of 1960s TV show C’mon.

Museum Director Dr. David Gaimster says the exhibition has been a huge success. “Volume has been one of our most popular exhibitions with visitors. The seven-month exhibition has been a chance to forge new partnerships in innovation, technology and entertainment to provide cutting-edge experiences for our visitors and tell the stories of New Zealand’s rich musical past and present,” he says.

Volume has been developed in partnership with the New Zealand Music Hall of Fame Trust (Recorded Music New Zealand and APRA AMCOS).

The exhibition is free with museum entry (free for Aucklanders) and is open for one more week until Sunday May 21st. A range of specially created merchandise is available from theVolume Pop Up Store and is now on sale.