Project description

In the historic monastic district of Bad Herrenalb a local history group „monastery and history“ is currently engaged in creating a museum, renovating a building dating back to 1860 for this purpose. A permanent exhibition will be dedicated to the relatively little known tradition of “after work tyles”, a type of folk art. “After work tyles” are rare, homemade roofing tyles with drawings and hand-written documents scratched into the wet clay by the tyle maker. The exhibits will display the history of the tyles and give particular insights into the social history of the tylers. The monastery’s own tyles, manufactured here since 1440, represent a direct link to the Herrenalb monastery. The museum will also host changing exhibitions on the history of the village and contain a reconstruction of a tyle maker’s work place.

Transinterpret became involved to help establish the target group profile for the museum. During two subsequent workshops the project team decided on the contents of the exhibition and its layout. Given the many valuable and beautiful pieces in the Bernt collection, the main difficulty was to stick to a manageable number of subthemes: After all, visitors not yet familiar with the topic should be stimulated rather than overwhelmed.

Current state of the project

The concept for the exhibition was developed during four workshops by the project team accompnied by Transinterpret. After choosing the exhibits the texts wrote by a volunteer professional copywriter who belongs to the project team. The museum was opened in December 2006.