A museum exhibit with informational panels labeled "Morocco / Maroc" and "Rwanda." A map of Africa highlights locations, and wall text describes the Gahaya Links Cooperative in Rwanda with large woven baskets with black and cream patterns displayed on pedestals on our right. A woman with light skin tonepicks up the lid of a small basket that looks like a smaller version of the towering basket on our left. The Morroco exhibit features a large photo of smiling children with light brown skin tone arm in arm and a base with jewlery. The space has a modern, minimal design with white exhibit walls, dark structural elements, and polished concrete flooring.

PAC worked with the Canadian Museum for Human Rights to expand Empowering Women into a multimodal, accessible exhibition experience featuring tactile objects, multilingual description, and a user-tested virtual reality component extending its stories beyond the museum.

Media

A behind-the-scenes filming setup in a narrow courtyard of three Indigenous Guatemalen women with medium brown skin tone being interviewed by two people with light skin tone wearing business casual clothes. The women are wearing colorful traditional woven blouses and patterned skirts sit together on a wooden bench on our left. A camera on a tripod is positioned in front of them, while a seated interviewer faces them with papers in hand. On the right, another crew member holds a large camera aimed toward the interview scene. The courtyard is cobblestoned, with yellow walls, wooden doors, exposed wooden roof beams, and bright sunlight illuminating the scene.
A large exhibition title wall for the show, "Empowering Women," with a floor to cieling colorful photograph of a woman with light golden brown wrinkled skin, partially covered by a red scarf or head covering with bright orange and purple patterned edges. She looks directly at us, her tattooed hand underneath her chin, Large thick white bangles adorn her arms. The sub title "Artisan Cooperatives That Transform Communities," is underneath the main title. All text is in French and English. On our right, a vertical list of green text reads, "To feed their families, to tell their stories, to preserve their heritage, to save the environment, to heal from war, to strengthen their communities, to become leaders, to save for the future, to escape domestic violence, to enter global markets."
A museum exhibit focused on Morrocan and Rawandan artisan cooperatives. Large images of artists, baskets, jewlery, wall text, and wall graphics label sections for "Morocco" and "Rwanda," with a pale map of Africa marking locations. The Morocco section on our right discusses the Women's Button Cooperative of Sefrou and includes a glass case with colorful handmade buttons or textile-related objects, a ledge with a necklace that can be touched, along with large portraits of women and children with medium light skin tone smiling at us. The Rwanda section on our right highlights the Gahaya Links Cooperative, small photos of artisans working, and two woven baskets similar in shape and design but different in size displayed on pedestals. behind the basket is a woman with medium dark brown skin tone wearing a head wrap that matches her shirt. The exhibit uses white walls, magenta and green labels, geometric decorative borders, and large portrait images, while the dark exposed ceiling and spotlights.
A museum exhibit featuring content about Guatemalan weaving practices. On our left, there is a display about Guatemala with traditional woven textiles, a mannequin dressed in colorful clothing, a loom with a weaving, informational panels, and a large photograph of a smiling older woman with wrinkled light brown skin tone in traditional Guatemalan attire. On our right, two visitors sit in chairs wearing virtual reality headsets, appearing to experience an interactive exhibit. The room is dimly lit with illuminated walls and display panels.
A busy cobblestone market or village street lined with fabric covered stalls, filled with pedestrians and vendors with light brown skin tone in Peru. Many people appear to be wearing colorful patterend traditional woven clothing, including a woman in the foreground carrying a child on her back. Across the middle of the image are five large illustrated circular icons with labels beneath them: "Work," "Living," "Culture," "Healing," and "Finale." A power-button symbol is centered near the bottom, suggesting this is an interactive menu or virtual experience interface layered over a real-world market scene.
A still from a video of a woman with medium brown skin tone and a purple and pink dress in a sunny courtyard or garden area shaded by dense trees and branches. The woman is slightly blurred but can be seen interacting with an upright wooden structure where she may be spinning yarn around it. White blocks or bricks are stacked on the right side, and sunlight filters through the leaves, creating dappled shadows on the ground. A French subtitle at the bottom reads: "chacune a son argent et la gère comme elle veut." There is also a pause icon in the lower-left corner, suggesting this is a paused video.
Three people with light skin tone wearing business casual clothes stand in an exhibition with large wall panels focused on Nepal and India. On the wall from left to right are red and green labels that read "Nepal - Janakpur Women's Development Center" and "India - Self Employed Women's..." with the rest of the text cut off behind a visitors head. The exhbiti contains a map, text sections, photos, and a digital touch screen with fabric touch sample. Farther down the gallery on our right, two other visitors are looking at additional exhibits of colorful clothing and fabrics. The space has polished floors, dark ceilings with track lighting, and a modern museum layout.
A close-up of someone with medium dark brown skin tone using a built-in touchscreen display set into a wooden tabletop. Their finger is pressing on the screen, which displays the logo for Audio Description and interface elements. A red item, possibly a booklet or pamphlet, lies partially visible on the left side of the table.
A close-up of a person with medium brown skin tone holding open a silver fabric pouch or purse with red, orange, and purple embroidered geometric shapes on it's surface. The pouch is sitting on a wooden table with the words, "Please touch!" in French and English to the right of the pouch. The inside of the open flap is bright red with a magnetic snap closure. In the background, colorful garments hang or drape, including purple striped fabric and orange material.

Project Description

The Empowering Women exhibition was loaned from the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The exhibition explored the power of female-run artisan cooperatives from conflict and post-conflict regions, and the role those cooperatives play in advancing human rights goals within their communities.

The challenge was to expand the exhibition’s storytelling approach so these important stories could be experienced by more visitors and through a greater number of modalities. This meant developing more multimodal and transmedia interpretive opportunities across the exhibition, including tactile objects, accessible environmental and graphic design, visual and audio description, multilingual content, and an accessible virtual reality experience.

The Power of Touch

Many exhibitions place precious artifacts behind glass, limiting direct engagement and often privileging visual access alone. For Empowering Women, accessible environmental and graphic design were applied throughout the exhibition, and touch objects were added for each story and cooperative represented in the gallery.

These touch objects gave visitors another meaningful way to encounter the materials, techniques, textures, and cultural context of the exhibition. Forward access was ensured so visitors could approach and engage the touch objects comfortably. As a result, visitors were able to explore the exhibition visually and tactilely, creating a richer and more equitable interpretive experience.

Accessible Virtual Reality

A novel component of this exhibition was the development of an accessible virtual reality experience. Members of the team traveled to Guatemala to collect interviews, photographs, and 360-degree video. The artifacts referenced in those stories were brought to Canada and became part of the exhibition, accompanied by corresponding touch objects. Through the VR experience, visitors could virtually travel to Guatemala and be immersed in the contexts surrounding the first-hand stories being told.

This created a layered transmedia storytelling experience across artifacts, text, images, touch objects, descriptions, and virtual environments. The goal was not to treat VR as a standalone novelty, but to integrate it into the broader interpretive strategy of the exhibition.

A central challenge was ensuring that the VR experience included meaningful accessibility affordances. Captions, audio description, and signed interpretation were developed in English, French, and Spanish. After extensive user testing, the team found that signed interpretation inside the headset created usability and comfort issues for some visitors. The VR experience already involved multiple forms of motion: 360-degree moving video, head tracking and swivel, and the visual presence of a static interpreter signing within the virtual field. Those competing motion systems created discomfort for some users.

In response, the signed interpretation was moved to an adjacent iPad-based version of the experience. This preserved access to the signed content while reducing motion conflict inside the headset. The iPads were placed adjacent to the VR installation, allowing visitors to choose the experience that worked best for them. The final implementation received outstanding feedback and demonstrated a practical, user-tested approach to making immersive media more accessible.

The VR experience was additionally available on iOS, Android, and Oculus so that users could enjoy the experience outside of the museum using either an Oculus headset or Google Cardboard.