EPIC: The Irish Emigration Museum is an interactive museum that walks through Irish history and culture and important figures that came from Ireland. Going through the museum, I found myself particularly engaged in the art/music sections. I’ve never been much of a history person, so sometimes reading through the countless paragraphs on geography, dates and founding figures is hard to stay interested. Something I found so cool about the EPIC museum was its interactive elements and having entire exhibits dedicated to authors and dancing. The “storytelling” exhibit had books by Irish authors around the room, and some could even be pulled out and a recording would read part of the story. This is something I have definitely never seen in other museums, and it was interesting to learn how many authors I had no idea were even Irish! This library section was definitely one of my favorite parts both for its interactivity and fun topic.
Later in the day, a few of us decided to visit the Guinness Storehouse, which also offered some unique takes on the museum aspect of the journey. Not only did we get to walk through the process of how Guinness is sourced and brewed, the experience also included the business side of things. I found myself particularly drawn to the advertising section, where we could see old posters and slogans for Guinness and other gimmicks used in their marketing. Having the different floors of the building represent different sections such as ingredients, the founder, advertising, tasting experience, etc. was a really cool layout, because you could control the interactivity and time spent on each. Seeing both the fun and business sides of this exhibit were a really cool and unique approach, since Guinness is such a wide-spread company.
