Morrisons Supermarket

Event Date: 24 Apr 2019

On April 24, we ‘popped-up’ at Morrisons - a major supermarket retailer in the U.K, with more than 500 stores across the country. Wisbech Morrisons lies just outside the town centre. It was made clear from some of our visitors that people in this part of town do not typically visit Wisbech town centre owing to a dislike of the town’s “anti-social behaviour and crime levels”.

During our 3-hour ‘Pop-Up’ session at the supermarket, it is estimated that we made impressions on at least 1100 people and had meaningful engagements (of 3 minutes or more) with 33 shoppers, which unfortunately was much less than anticipated. One possible reason for this is that shoppers may have assumed we were a charity or sales stand, thus treating us with suspicion! A lot of people were also on a time constraint, eager to get their shopping done or en route for another chore.

One particularly rewarding engagement we had with a shopper to Morrisons was Alastair Dunnett (pictured below) who is the Outreach Officer at the Wisbech & Fenland Archaeological Society. As a result of meeting Alastair, we invited him to take part in a conference organised by the Fitzwilliam Museum on June 3 titled ‘Do Not Touch? 3D in Museums’. Alastair took part in a panel discussion exploring the role of physical and virtual museum object experiences with communities and how we can better influence peoples’ health and wellbeing.