The visitor centre of the State Nature Reseve

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The visitor centre of the State Nature Reseve «Kostomukshsky»

Экспозиция визит-центра государственного природного заповедника «Костомукшский»

The article is about examining the specifics of implementation of the program to upgrade the museum space by means of innovation technologies and searching for most effective forms of interaction with visitors. The exhibition held in the visitor centre of the State Nature Reserve «Kostomukshsky» is studied as a case of teamwork engaging professionals of different fields focused on making the museum space closer and more attractive for people of different age, and first of all, for children and teenages.

The complex includes several semantic zones: a class for conducting environmental education classes, a class introducing visitors to the morphological properties of the flora and fauna of the northern taiga, a historical exposition, an environmental education exposition and a biological theater.

Entrance zone of the center, light installation

In the class introducing the morphological properties of animals, a complex of interactive installations is presented. They demonstrate the most expressive and informative scientific facts related to the reserve.

In the “Biological Cuisine” section, the viewer, according to the recipes described in the information stands, can independently prepare dinner for the elk, capercaillie and beaver. There are all the necessary ingredients here: dried blueberry and lingonberry leaves, pine twigs, willow, birch, alder bark, dried rowan berries, mushrooms, stones and much more that representatives of the fauna of this region eat.

Beaver food should be prepared as follows: grind branches of aspen, willow and birch with the help of an electric installation, add a little alder bark. The resulting mixture can be packed in a specially prepared paper bag with an image of an animal or a bird and you can take a souvenir from the reserve with you.

To prepare dinner for a capercaillie, it is necessary to sift small stones from the sand, add a small amount of needles and dried lingonberries.

The "Sound Herbarium" with the help of special acoustic glasses in the voices of scientists gives us answers to some questions from the life of the reserve.

The installation called “Look through the eyes of animals” will allow you to look at the protected forest through the eyes of an owl, lynx and wolf, and understand exactly how they really see.

As in any museum, there is also a "Miracle" in the exposition. The complex technical development of an engineer from St. Petersburg is a series of secret rooms in which real miracles take place.

The historical section of the visitor center of the reserve contains unique household items of the local population dated back to the 19th-20th centuries. Akonlahti was the largest village among other Karelian settlements on the shores of Lake Kiitehenjärvi, which is located in the heart of the reserve. In 1832 the Finnish physician Elias Lennrot discovered Akonlahti as a rune-singing village. The songs he recorded formed the basis of the great epic Kalevala. In 1958, in connection with the reorganization of the state border, people were hastily evicted from the villages and farms of the lake. In 1983, the Kostomukshsky nature reserve was organized, which included the territories of the former Karelian villages of Lake Kiitekhenyarvi.

In the historical section, based on an outdated weaving mill, an installation was designed that encourages visitors to study and embroider Karelian ornaments

Further, the viewer passes through the "Gate of Modernity" and enters our time, where a century later we are forced to solve global environmental problems.

The "Sorting Station" installation will teach anyone who wants to properly sort garbage

This section has a room that presents alternative materials for household use that reduce the consumption of plastic and cellophane.

The environmental education class is designed for twenty people. Tables are modular waves that can be used in a wide variety of variations. In turn, the chairs are a poster divided into sixteen sections. By collecting this poster, children will be able to study all the fish of the protected rivers and lakes of the region. It is noteworthy that in this case we observe the allocation within the space of the museum of a specific "children's" space, where its boundaries are determined, among other things, by the use of real objects as modules of a game or an activity built in a playful form.
Another feature is the ability to situationally redefine the space, for example, to come up with a game from improvised means. In this case, the playful use of finished objects as modules that perform the educational functions of the exposition through the essentially playful combination of these elements creates a kind of accent “inside” the museum exposition, a point of attraction for both children and adults.

The biological theater is an integral part of the exposition. Here, children will be able to play, for example, the life of an anthill, distributing the roles of its inhabitants among themselves. Such a theatrical game develops imaginative thinking and helps children and theater audience to find out exactly how the anthill works, what its inhabitants eat and what benefits they bring.

Wardrobe

The modern museum exposition is based, first of all, on the idea of the museum as a cultural, research center, and, on the other hand, as a meeting place for different age, social, professional and ethnic groups. When creating a museum environment, a designer must take into account a large number of factors and conditions that affect the quality of the solutions he proposes.

Traditional programs now are master classes that teach and develop classes based on the exposition. Their formation should take place in the process of creating an exposition. Thus, when designing something, it is necessary to initially foresee the moment of the relationship between the exhibit and the visitor in different directions: age, historical, scientific, practical. To do this, the designer needs to study the history of the object, find forms of its relationship with the modern world, and choose diverse ways to demonstrate the object. An important part of any exposure is the availability of unique information. According to the definition proposed by A. Mol, “the appearance of some reliably expected message or event does not provide the addressee with any additional information and cannot affect his behavior. An unexpected event, the probability of which, by definition, is equal to zero, significantly changes the behavior of the addressee.

In our country, only nature reserves are currently engaged in environmental education, which are far from being located in all regions or cities of Russia. For this reason, this function can be assumed by those educational institutions that are available in the area. At the same time, museums can also engage in environmental education, which will enrich their program.

Work on the project brought together more than a dozen professionals from various fields: scientific, technical, creative, philological, etc. A new approach to the implementation of complex tasks has convincingly demonstrated successful results. With the help of educational programs laid down at the design stage, museum staff will be able to conduct exciting excursions for children and adults for a long time, combining various “layers” of information. Any part of the exhibition and all installations are accessible to people with limited mobility, and the absence of age restrictions will allow everyone to visit the museum.

Project designers Andrei Skritsky and Nastya Dubrovskaya.

Scientific consultants: Sergey Vadimovich Tarkhov,
Nina Evgenievna Tarkhova, Irina Gaidysh, Yuri Krasovsky,
Valentina Patsukevich, Valentina Khoteeva,
Leonid Borisovich Rybalov, Boris Raevsky, Andrey Khumala.

Engineer: Sergey Karlov.

Work on texts: Anastasia Kuznetsova, Irina Putro.

Animation: Egor Alentiev, Boris Kazakov.

Installation from recycled materials: Marina Alekseeva.

2017