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    Case study · Zoom Arts Gallery · St Leonards-on-Sea (UK)

    A gallery inside a train station where sight is told out loud.

    At Warrior Square station in St Leonards-on-Sea, the Zoom Arts collective opened Over Sight: a show about sight and blindness in which every piece —painting, textile, drift wood, ceramics— carries a NaviLens code and is connected to the next by a tactile guide rope running along the wall.

    Red-brick facade of St Leonards Warrior Square station with the Zoom Arts Gallery entrance arch: an open white-framed door with a red and white sign reading «THE OVER SIGHT GALLERY OPEN», a shop window with an A-frame poster on the pavement reading «Zoom Arts Community Gallery» and a metal dog bowl on the ground; in the background, the striped white platform canopy

    Warrior Sq.

    St Leonards Warrior Square railway station (East Sussex, UK)

    Over Sight

    Exhibition on sight and blindness, accessible with NaviLens

    Guide rope

    Tactile cord line linking every coded label along the wall

    Hastings

    Zoom Arts artists' collective (1066 / Hastings & St Leonards)

    Client

    Zoom Arts Gallery
    Warrior Square Station · St Leonards-on-Sea · UK

    Zoom Arts is an artists' collective from Hastings and St Leonards-on-Sea (East Sussex, UK) that rotates exhibitions in its small community-run gallery inside the old Warrior Square railway station building. They work in painting, photography, glass, sculpture, textile and mixed media, and open the doors to an audience that often steps in simply because they were passing through to catch a train.

    For Over Sight —dedicated to sight, the lack of vision and the other senses— the collective decided accessibility could not be an add-on. They combined NaviLens codes beside every piece with a tactile guide rope running along the wall from room to room, and invited white-cane users to walk through and touch the works.

    Two visitors in front of a mixed-media work: a grey-haired man with dark glasses and a blue Gore-Tex coat raises his iPhone to scan a NaviLens code on the wall, while a woman next to him touches a white feathered figure inside a three-dimensional wooden frame; the guide rope runs horizontally along the white wall

    § The solution

    Rope on the wall, code by the work, voice in the ear.

    A thin hemp rope runs along every wall of the gallery at hand height, linking each work with the next: blind visitors don't need a companion to keep the thread of the route. Beside every piece, a printed label with a NaviLens code sits next to a small backup QR.

    Pointing the phone from several steps away, the app recognises the label and reads out the title, authorship and description. The explicit invitation to touch turns the room into a multisensory visit, not a separate guided tour for blind people apart from the rest of the public.

    § Walk-through

    From Icarus to the copper leaves, without letting go of the rope.

    • Large textile work hung on the white wall: golden male figure with arms outstretched and two huge wings of real grey and white feathers on a painted orange, yellow and red background with the silhouette of a red sun

      Centerpiece · Mixed media

      «Icarus» with feathered wings

      The largest piece in the room —an Icarus with real feathered wings against an orange sun— carries its NaviLens label beside it, outside the frame. Those who can't see it hear it; those who can see it can also hear it as they look.

    • Visitor with dark glasses and a blue Gore-Tex coat pointing an iPhone at a NaviLens code on the wall while touching a white feathered figure inside a wooden frame

      Accompanied visit · Touch and listen

      Hands on the work

      In Over Sight touching is allowed. As the hand discovers the texture of the painting, the app reads out the label: information about the piece reaches the ear at the same time as the form reaches the touch.

    • Work framed in dark wood on a white wall: inside the frame, on crumpled teal fabric, a sculptural female figure in white cloth wearing a dress and a feather veil surrounded by small white roses; to the right, a small white label with a NaviLens code

      Textile sculpture · Wooden frame

      White figure with roses

      The rope reaches exactly the foot of the frame: a white-cane visitor knows they've found a new piece without having to feel the wall. The code is always to the right of the painting.

    • White wall with two works: on the left, a vertical drift-wood piece shaped as an elongated mask with two yellow nailed eyes; on the right, the textile figure framed in dark wood; between them, the hemp rope zig-zags across the wall

      Guide rope · Room link

      The hemp thread between works

      The rope zig-zags up and down between piece and piece, passing every label. It is at once route, tactile index and visual guide: what other museums achieve with a podotactile strip, here is done with a cord.

    • Painting on board on the white wall: expressionist portrait of a bearded man with glasses, executed with matter, threads and real greenish moss; to the right, a small white label with a NaviLens code

      Portrait · Matter and moss

      NaviLens label beside the work

      The painting has volume, threads and moss: the voice reading does not replace the piece, it presents it. The description tells what the hand is already recognising on the surface.

    • Textile tapestry framed by drift-wood sticks tied with turquoise rope, hung on a cream wall: painting on cloth showing white sheep grazing on a green field under a blue sky with yellow clouds

      Textile · Drift wood

      Landscape with sheep

      A landscape painted on cloth and framed with sticks collected from the Sussex coast: the NaviLens label tells the story and the origin of the materials, two things the image alone does not deliver.

    • Two visitors seated behind a white plinth inside the gallery with a ceramic vessel decorated with oak leaves and a vertical mosaic of blue and white plate fragments on an orange background; on the plinth, a label «Emma Harding — Head Pot with Leaves» with a NaviLens code

      Ceramic & mosaic · On plinth

      «Head Pot with Leaves» — Emma Harding

      Ceramic pieces also carry their code on the plinth: the visitor can touch the vessel and, in the same gesture, listen to the label. Every artist in the collective is named, as in any other exhibition.

    • Cream gallery wall with a vertical composition of dried, rusted copper-and-grey leaves arranged into an elongated figure; around it, the hemp rope draws a stepped frame and two small white labels with NaviLens codes

      Installation · Natural leaves

      Rope as a frame

      On works without a rigid frame, the rope draws a stepped perimeter that frames the piece by touch. The coded labels sit at the corners, exactly where the hand changes direction.

    • Group of four people smiling in front of the white gallery wall, two of them holding white canes, beside artists from the collective with several works in the background

      Real visit · White canes

      Users and artists together

      The white-cane visitors invited to the walk-through pose with artists from the collective: Over Sight is not a simulated room, it's a real exhibition open to the public in a train station, validated by its end users.

    The gallery occupies the old ticket building of St Leonards Warrior Square (TN37 6BS), run by Zoom Arts as a community space in agreement with the rail operator. The public comes in to buy a ticket, looks and leaves; in Over Sight, they can also touch and listen.

    § What they said

    • “Zoom Arts is a Hastings based Arts Group who collectively exhibit their work in local venues. By providing spaces in busy, vibrant locations for members to exhibit their own work, the group enables the member artist to benefit experientially whilst presenting an informal, approachable gateway for members of the public to access and engage with the visual arts.”
    • “Zoom Arts continues to make best use of its gallery space at St Leonards Warrior Square station with an exhibition featuring water-colour paintings, photography, glass objects and mixed media. Two new shows provide more momentum to the revival of the visual arts in Hastings.”
    • “Zoom Arts Gallery, Warrior Square Station, St Leonards on Sea — an exciting and eclectic mix of work by Zoom members, unthemed, with photography, mixed media art and sculpture, in a space conceived as an informal gateway for the public to engage with the visual arts.”

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