How Casson Mann’s ‘Clowncil’ helped secure a Museums + Heritage Award

Gary Shelley was sitting in a room of comedians, clowns, and magicians to discuss the inherent comedic value of large things made small, and small things made large.

The director of exhibition designers Casson Mann was serving as lead creative director on what would become Blackpool’s ‘Showtown’.

The room of entertainers was pulled together to foster new ideas and approaches in service of the museum’s design, which would go on to win Best Permanent Exhibition at this year’s Museums + Heritage Awards.

“It’s quite a privilege to be sitting in a room being told by a magician, who loves Blackpool, how he worked in a magicians’ shop from the age of 13”, Shelley said.

Enter the Clowncil: When Comedians Become Creative Consultants

The consultative team, or ‘clowncil’ as it would go on to be called, was part of an attempt to think outside the box in meeting a unique brief.

The designers were tasked with bottling the sense of fun and laughter that Blackpool was famous for, and draw in visitors who might not normally visit a museum, particularly in an area with so many other attractions to compete with.

The challenge, said Shelley, “was how to let people know that it would be an experience, rather than education.”

“Because it was a story of entertainment, we wanted it to be true to the story and tell it in an entertaining way, for instance asking ourselves ‘what’s funny?’, ‘what would make people press that button…”.

“That’s how we came up with the idea of the ‘behind the scenes’, you might not come inside to see Punch and Judy, but you can, if you can make a show yourself, you can go in the hut and look at it outwards.”

“People can go to the circus, but how many people have snuck out to the back of a circus tent, finding themselves in the clown’s dressing room. That simple concept was a guiding light.”

The Museums + Heritage Awards panel said the project was “full of fun, laughter, and a real celebration of local heritage this winning exhibition is lively, engaging, and unapologetically fun – the museum equivalent of a thrilling arcade, capturing the heart of its location while giving visitors a fantastic, laughter-filled journey.”

Originally known as the Blackpool Museum Project, ‘Showtown’ opened last year, revealing six galleries which explore the seaside, magic, circus, Illuminations, shows, and dance.

Located near the Blackpool Tower, it sits on the first floor of the Sands Venue Resort Hotel and Spa on the Blackpool Promenade.

Items on display include the famous bowler hat worn by Stan Laurel, a prop used by the comedic magician Tommy Cooper, and various mementos from the Tower Circus.

The V&A has also lent items including Tommy Cooper’s trademark fez.

Pink Stairs and Blue Skies: Designing for Instagram and Impact

The resulting design sees bright colours in every direction and a focus on interactives and immersion.

“Above a certain height we painted everything blue, like the sky, because we’re meant to be on the promenade… It’s amusing, those colours. You often look up into those types of ceilings and they’re black, but we made a virtue out of quite a low, wide space. “

An introductory zone, which began with stairs, was painted a bright pink, with an arch over it, creating something that was “really direct and communicative, telling people where to go in an engaging and slightly Instagram-able way.”

Shelley said he wanted to imbue the ‘step right up’ atmosphere of a circus ring, “which is contagious, that’s your hope”.

With low ceilings, an LED screen was chosen over projections to display a beach scene montage of famous entertainers. Despite being 18 meters long, Shelley said it was “quite fortuitous that we could, in the end, afford that screen because it really has an impact. It has a level of sparkle to it.”

Asked if the departure from more conventional museum design felt like a risk, Shelley said to an extent, every design “feels like a risk”.

“Up until the opening day you always feel like ‘oh my god, is this the right thing, have we made an awful mistake”.

“Those are V&A objects in there, and what are the V&A going to say when we show them this and say ‘this is what we’re going to do with your costume’?!”.

Awards Validation

Following the win and a positive response since its opening, Shelley said “even at the Museums + Heritage Awards ceremony, people from Manchester Museum came up and said “that’s how all museums should be designed”.

“It’s a big relief that the response has been so positive, ” he said, and added had confidence in the idea of building consultative teams for future exhibition designs.

On winning a Museums + Heritage Award, Shelley said: “We didn’t think we’d got it. We thought we’d go, take a couple of clients with us, and think of it as a way to finish the process.

“There was no one as surprised as we were.

“We were really, really pleased. To get that sort of validation, you think ‘thank god for that’. It is still a museum, but it tries to do things differently. People could have gone there and thought ‘you’ve really dumbed this down’. We felt we hadn’t dumbed it down.

“We just made it in a way that felt more Blackpool.”

Congratulations to the Permanent Exhibition of the Year winner, @ShowtownBPL with @cassonmann! 🏆 Sponsored by @MatherandCo_ltd. #MandHAwards2025

Full of fun, laughter, and a real celebration of local heritage this winning exhibition is lively, engaging, and unapologetically fun… pic.twitter.com/tmTS36PXX6

— Museums + Heritage Show & Awards (@MandHShow) May 15, 2025

 

And the success of the process has led Shelley to consider consultative teams as a more important part of future projects.

“The more we get involved in putting together consultative teams – people outside of our sphere – the more interesting we find it, and the more you can channel yourself.”

Future consultative teams, even if they don’t include clowns and magicians, will need to include “someone who challenges an assumption you might have made, and someone that reveals something you hadn’t thought of.”