The West Midlands Police Museum (WMPM) currently resides at Sparkhill police station in Birmingham in a small room only accessible by appointment. Now the museum wishes to move home! The Steelhouse Lane Lock-up is a huge 4 storey Victorian gaol located 15 minutes walk away from New Street train station.

To see how the project will progress and the full interpretation plan, please visit:

The Lock-up has almost 80 cells open for interpretative design and has held some of Britain's most notorious criminals - including the famous Peaky Blinders.

My role in the project was to spatial plan the visitor experience and to visualise the concepts for funding opportunities through the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

I used two 3D modelling tools to create the above and below visuals; Above images were modelled in SketchUp and edited in Photoshop and below were modelled and rendered in Vectorworks.

Using the inbuilt renderer of Vectorworks I created numerous visuals to effectively portray what the space would feel like. This contributed to the successful NLHF bid, were the client has received full funding for the project to go ahead. 

The space for the main exhibition is a converted shower/WC area and as such is very narrow. To allow accessibility in the space the furniture and fixtures had to be shallow. Graphic panels and recessed cases were used to optimise the space and give the visitor the best experience.

The exhibition is displayed chronologically but can be viewed in a reverse chronology without losing context.