SGA Productions creates Wallace & Gromit show

SGA Productions has put together a team of seven interactive, sound and lighting designers for a new £2m Science Museum exhibition, Wallace & Gromit Present a World of Cracking Ideas.

Due to open at the end of March, the show will feature a 1000m2 outsize mock-up of Wallace & Gromit’s house and garden, as seen in the films The Wrong Trousers and The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

Wallace & Gromit creator Aardman Animations has produced two minutes of new footage exclusively for the show (pictured), in which the duo work on a new invention.

The UK Intellectual Property Office commissioned the exhibition as an extension of its Cracking Ideas programme, which uses the animated duo to inspire creativity and innovation among UK schoolchildren.

Windsor-based exhibition and events group SGA Productions produces all Aardman’s live events. The two companies presented their ideas to the IPO last summer, receiving a brief to deliver ‘an experience that stimulates change in thinking, delivers engagement and ultimately empowers people to innovate,’ says SGA creative director Sarah Gibbon.

The house will feature more than 80 ‘idea stations’, allowing visitors to create their own ideas and inventions, before physically loading them on to an overhead conveyancing system and continuing their journey through the house and garden. About 12 of these stations will be digitally interactive. Four consultancies – Science Projects, Amalgam, Machine Shop and Littleloud – are to build the interactive exhibits.

SGA appointed the groups in December, following a 15-way creative unpaid tender. Brighton-based Littleloud is creating an arcade-style game featuring a 3D animation of Wallace & Gromit. Three gaming stations with bespoke game controllers will ‘reference retro gaming sticks,’ says Littleloud producer David Jacklin.

Lighting design group Stage Electrics and sound designer Andrew McKenna are also working on the show, to bring unity to the various exhibits. These include a giant water wheel, a ‘karaoke disco shower’, a slide from Wallace & Gromit’s bathroom to the garden, a soft play area and a ‘huge, secret Wallace & Gromit contraption’, says Gibbon. IYA Studios is working with SGA to realise the exhibition design.

The show is likely to travel to other UK venues and possibly beyond. Gibbon says it has already secured a UK venue once it leaves the Science Museum in October.

A Cracking Show: The Designers

Exhibition: SGA Productions with IYA Studios

Interactive: Science Projects, Amalgam, Machine Shop, Littleloud

Lighting: Stage Electrics

Sound: Andrew McKenna