Featherweight Projects

Featherweight Projects is a Sydney-based experiential, exhibition and interpretive design studio working with museums, cultural institutions, heritage sites and public organisations. Its practice combines curatorial research, spatial design and multimedia storytelling to develop visitor experiences in Australia and internationally. Projects range from cultural masterplans and interpretive strategies to detailed exhibition design, content production and implementation.

The studio develops narratives through historical and archival research, image and film research, oral histories, writing and editing. These activities inform the design of exhibition spaces, interactive installations, interpretive graphics and wayfinding. Its work brings together physical displays, collection objects, documentary material and digital media, considering how visitors encounter stories through the physical, emotional and digital dimensions of a space.

Cultural interpretation and visitor experiences

For the Australian Opal Centre in Lightning Ridge, Featherweight Projects developed an interpretive plan and content brief for a museum concerned with fossils and cultural history. Its work on the Gibberagong Track in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park combined multisensory interpretive signage with nine digital films celebrating Country and Aboriginal cultural heritage. The Spit Stories Project on Queensland’s Gold Coast involved primary research, community panel facilitation and narrative development for historical, ecological and cultural interpretation.

Museum projects include Assembly of Trees at Adelaide’s Museum of Discovery, an interactive public space incorporating real-time polling visualisations and a greenhouse laboratory, and visitor experience design and installation for the museum’s 2025 Forever exhibition. The studio also contributed exhibition development, oral history collection and documentary photography to Our Stories at Albury LibraryMuseum, which explored three generations of Nepali-speaking Bhutanese refugee families.

Its international exhibition work includes spatial experience planning for the touring marine exploration exhibition OceanXperience and environmental storytelling for Julia Child: A Recipe for Life. Other commissions encompass early-learning museum spaces, aviation interpretation, community archives, gallery exhibitions and cultural planning. Across these settings, the studio connects researched content with the design and delivery of public experiences.