Corvidae was founded in 2003 to bring the exhibition and web expertise of Simon Basketter and Richard Crowest to the museum and heritage sector.
Many smaller museums face challenges in creating exhibitions and web sites that are well-designed, attractive to visitors and meet the accessibility needs of a diverse audience. The fees charged by large design agencies can put their services totally out of reach, and their awareness of accessibility issues and the needs of the heritage sector is often small.
Between them, Simon and Richard have more than four decades of experience in interpretation, theatre, broadcasting, publishing, interactive media and corporate communications. They are ideally placed to offer the combination of skills museums need at a price they can afford.
Simon Basketter BA – Creative Director
Simon trained as a theatre designer, and worked in film and television before a spell in the design department of the Royal National Theatre. From there, he moved into the corporate world, designing a wide range of visitor experiences, notably including three separate pavilions at Garden Festival Wales. He’s also been heavily involved in the design and delivery of “culture change” programmes for some of Britain’s leading companies, using shared experience to help teams and individuals reshape their actions and behaviour to respond to the changing world around them. Simon is a visiting lecturer in design at the Royal Central School of Speech & Drama and UAL Central St. Martins.
Richard Crowest – Production Director
Richard is the ultimate non-specialist. For ten years, while working as an announcer and on-screen presenter for ITV, he was also writing comedy sketches for Radio 4, editing travel books for Jarrold Publishing and experimenting with panoramic photography.
The search for a way to unite these skills and interests led him to take an MA in Heritage Interpretation in 1998-9, gaining a distinction. Briefly sidetracked into the world of marketing for a few years, he set up Corvidae in 2003 to bring the communication techniques he’d learned there to the heritage sector.