Kurate Town History and Folklore Museum Coal Materials displays Room

Kurate Town, located in the northwest of Fukuoka Prefecture, once developed as a part of the Kyushu Chikuho coalfield. This facility is a museum where you can learn about the history of coal mining in Kurate Town through "experiences." displays are divided into four main zones: an introductory "chronology," a "reproduced mine tunnel" using darkness, a "reproduced diorama" of the coal mining site, and a "storyteller" section where interviews by workers and recorders from that time are filmed and edited. By making the most of the limited displays space of 260 square meters and giving each zone its own unique characteristics, the museum is designed to appeal to visitors in a variety of ways and to interest them.

We wanted to create an experiential displays that would allow visitors to experience what the mines were like in the real world, by touring the dark tunnels while holding lighted helmets (commonly known as cap lamps) or flashlights that were used by the workers at the time.

A major issue was that graphic text and photos were hard to see in the dark, and physical operation of buttons and other devices was also difficult. Therefore, we focused on the cap lamp/flashlight given to visitors when they enter the museum, and developed a new switch that reacts when light is shone on it and plays video and audio commentary, allowing visitors to experience the immersive feeling of "darkness" while also properly obtaining information about the mines. In addition, the walls are decorated with letters that glow when light is shone on them, and visitors can use the light to search for information themselves, creating a sense of excitement and creating an experiential displays unique to this facility.

The tunnels recreated in displays room, with their darkness and the slope of the tunnels, are highly acclaimed as a space where visitors can experience a coal mine. The life-size replica of the coal mining site where coal is excavated is also popular for being easy to understand. displays, which can be viewed using the light of flashlights and cap lamps, which are essential for viewing displays room at our museum, have attracted attention as a way of viewing that cannot be experienced at other facilities.