Puffin Rock Habitats

Puffin Rock Habitats / Touring Exhibition
Client: Cartoon Saloon & The Heritage Council
Role: Exhibition Designer

Funded by Creative Ireland through the Creative Climate Action fund

Credit
Project Lead: Ann Mulrooney (Cartoon Saloon)
Science and Pedagogy Lead: Tasneem Khan
Visual Lead: Enora Le Luherne (Cartoon Saloon)
Participation Co-lead: Catherine Casey (The Heritage Council)
Participation Co-lead: Pearse O Caoimh (The Heritage Council)

Tour Venues
Riverbank Arts Centre, Newbridge Co. Kildare
Mayfair Library, Kilkenny City
Skibbereen Arts Festival, Co. Cork
Old Market House Arts Centre, Dungarvan, Co. Waterford
Glenveagh National Park Visitor Centre, Co. Donegal
The Ark, Temple Bar, Dublin City
Flowerfield Arts Centre, Portstewart, Derry/Londonderry, N.Ireland
Mermaid Arts Centre, Bray, Co. Wicklow

Overview

Puffin Rock is a preschool animated TV show and feature film created by Cartoon Saloon in Kilkenny and Dog Ears Studios in Derry. Nature and wildlife are central to the stories and visual style of the show, featuring beautiful depictions of Irish flora and fauna. With wide international distribution, it has built a significant preschool audience for its focus on nature, gentle humour and positive values of connection and care.

The popularity of Puffin Rock offered a valuable opportunity to teach young audiences and their families and communities about the importance and interdependence of habitat and biodiversity conservation, a crucial subject which does not have the same level of understanding or awareness as climate change with the general public. The Heritage Council joined the project as an educational partner, to ensure that pedagogical and ecological learning was in line with national policy, and they further extended the efficacy of the project through production of an activity book, tailored workshops and a facilitator’s guide.

There were a minimum of two workshops offered to each venue, one intended to show venue facilitators how to use the exhibition as a teaching tool, and a second to allow facilitation workshop attendees to shadow a children’s workshop and see this in practice.

Exhibition Concept

The exhibition concept was to communicate the idea of habitats as ‘homes’ for nature - by exploring Puffin Rock through some of its well-known characters as a series of habitats, it would encourage audiences to look at their own surroundings in this way and understand that the landscapes and green spaces around us are also ‘homes’ for nature that we need to take good care of.

Exhibition Design

For the exhibition design, we focused more closely on four specific habitats: Marine, Intertidal, Grassland and Wetland. We crafted a journey through these habitats, led by puffin characters Oona and Baba, and meeting different Puffin Rock characters in each habitat. We then amalgamated different scenes from the series and film, to incorporate a rich diversity of flora and fauna for each habitat.

Each habitat was illustrated with a large immersive three-dimensional image housed in a large backlit cabinet that could be closed to allow for safe transport between venues. To encourage exploration and play, we created a welcome zone of a play boat to start people on their journey, and created an interactive sensory zone for each habitat, We also considered the specific conservation messages we wanted to communicate for each habitat. The website was also constructed around the exhibition design concepts, to support communication of the key messages.

We were conscious of the carbon footprint of the exhibition, and wherever possible we used repurposed and recycled materials or sourced the most sustainable versions of new materials. We commissioned handmade exhibition furniture from Greenwood in Co. Wicklow. The exhibition will be re-homed and have a second life following the tour and if/when it is finally decommissioned, we will sort the various materials and recycle correctly.

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