One final post for 2024 from me, to say “the final exhibit is installed!”

Connection Engine will open to the public, along with the entire Media Museum building, on the 8th January. We are on the first floor at the top of the stairs, and rather pleasingly you can see us from the street outside.

The core of the exhibit is an interactive mapping interface, hosting 18 Bradford specific stories with, various ‘data buckets’ to allow users to explore the different types of information historians can explore to learn new stories. There are then eight ‘techniques’ running throughout the exhibit, which show tools the project has used and connects these to different types of data.

Each technique features an interactive moment where visitors can learn how the technology works and what it offers historians. These in turn then link back to their relevant stories, meaning visitors can bounce around Bradford in a few different ways.

We’ve used the wall space to 1) reflect on what Congruence Engine was 2) celebrate the social machine and the role of people in these pipelines we propose and 3) thank everyone, including our 19 Bradford groups and many project partners!

I myself would like to take a moment to say a huge thank you to everyone who’s helped on the exhibit; providing data, researching stories, explaining their work to me umpteen times, and so on. If our early (staff) visitors yesterday, were anything to go off, I think this should be a hit!