Mr. Lam Kwok Fai, Director of the Hong Kong Heritage Museum, was invited to speak at the “SCOM TALK” series organised by the School of Communication at Hang Seng University of Hong Kong on 26 March. Under the theme “Effective Strategies for Museums to Tell Good Stories”, he shared valuable insights into cultural communication and narrative strategies in museums. The talk drew a large and engaged audience.
Mr. Lam began by introducing the basic models of communication, pointing out that the distinctive feature of museum communication lies in the decontextualization and recontextualization of exhibits, while also taking into account visitors’ purposes and the composition of their experiences. He cited the Shannon-Weaver communication model and the interactive experience model by Falk and Dierking to analyse how visitors’ personal, social, and physical contexts influence their exhibition experience. Mr Lam emphasised that curation is a process of telling stories through exhibits within limited space and resources, requiring a balance among the museum’s mission, financial support, administrative procedures, and staffing.
Mr. Lam also drew on several successful exhibitions as case studies to concretely demonstrate the three key elements of storytelling — engaging content, interactivity, and exhibition design — as well as the outcomes of exhibition performance evaluation.
Mr. Lam Kwok Fai responded to students’ questions
Group photo
