Designing Disgust: Why do we feel the need to judge?

"Clothing is, by its nature, emotive. The dress we wore to the prom, the suit we wore on our wedding day. Clothes have meaning to us. That emotion, however, is not always positive. Is that a bad thing? Do we secretly love to be disgusted? Will the clothes and items we find perfectly acceptable today disgust others in a few short years?

History would teach us this is likely to be the case - this project will allow us to design an exhibition that will help us to go deeper - to understand why that is the case, and experience it for ourselves, in the way we choose to.

For example, Worthing Museum has a piece we shall call the ""Monkey Cape"", a cape worn by a lady, made from a monkey. In its time this was a luxury piece generating joy and pride in its own - as the piece has evolved it has transitioned to generating Disgust. Join that piece on its journey, and through the experience, the ""Evolution of the Monkey Cape""; begin to question the things we find acceptable today. Will the class of 2060 view our plastic shoes with the same feelings the cape evokes in us?

The project aims to take Disgust, as it relates to Worthing Museum and Art Gallery's current collection, and discover how a visitor would like to experience this collection. In this way the visitor becomes part of the process for designing the exhibition that they would like to visit, rather than being led by museum professionals or a technological perspective.

As a sector, Cultural Heritage is traditionally very strong on providing an expert opinion, on everything from how a piece should be displayed - through to what the visitor needs to know. However, there are always multiple interpretations of museum objects. Disgust asks the visitor to explore this for themselves - and co-curate the exhibition, and the experiences they would like to have. Democratising the museum and freeing the visitor from the traditional authoritarian constraints within museums.

This consultative process will offer audiences the chance to discuss and help to design the final exhibition design - which will then proceed to the next stage of research and development. This unprecedented input will mean that visitors are engaged and invested in the project, helping to share ownership and generate buy-in from current and potential future audiences."