The creative partnership telling compelling stories in space

by Claire Dalton

Fadó Fadó is a newly launched multidisciplinary practice focused on narrative-driven interpretive design and engaging spatial experiences. A female-led creative partnership, Fadó Fadó combines the expertise and talents of Claire Healy (Spatial Designer), Claire Henry (Content Developer) and Bethany Shepherd (Graphic Designer).

Fadó Fadó’s most recent collaborative project is BIAS: BUILT THIS WAY, an interactive, thought-provoking exploration of preferences, prejudices and digital equity. BIAS—Science Gallery Dublin’s 50th exhibition and their first in-person exhibition since the pandemic—aims to deep dive into bias within ourselves, how that creeps into AI systems and how that in turn perpetuates further bias within society.

We spoke with the team at Fadó Fadó to find out more about the collective, their work on BIAS and their plans for the future.

ALHAUS magazine: How did Fadó Fadó begin?
Claire Healy: Bethany and I teach together on the MA Narrative Environments course at Central Saint Martins, where we both studied. We collaborated previously on a range of exciting UK-based projects including immersive experiences for Secret Cinema. We got together with Claire [Henry], who is an interpretation consultant, after a chance meeting on Instagram. Claire had worked for lots of interesting clients, like the Natural History Museum, English Heritage and The Royal Observatory, Greenwich. The three of us hit it off, bonding over our mutual love of telling compelling stories in space.

AM: Tell us more about Fadó Fadó and what you do?
Bethany Shepherd: We specialise in multi-platform storytelling and delivering meaningful and cohesive design and content across the entire visitor experience in both physical and digital spaces. While our core team encompasses interpretation, graphic and spatial design skills, we often form and work with a collaborative group unique to each project’s requirements—for example with an entrepreneur, an architect, a musician, an artist, a perfumer or a photographer. Sometimes we join an in-house team, and other times we work directly with a client who has a vision. We like to bring clients through the design process from start to finish as it’s great to be involved in both shaping and delivering the vision.

Claire Healy: We also offer our expertise to specific areas of projects. This can take many forms from developing and delivering workshops, through to curation, creating a visual identity, designing a space or developing trends and futures research and speculative designs.

AM: Tell us more about the name and the ethos behind Fadó Fadó?
Claire Healy: The name Fadó Fadó means ‘Long, long ago...’ in Gaelige and is traditionally used to begin a story, similar to ‘Once upon a time...’. It speaks to the variety within our work and the heart of what we do—that is, make spaces that tell stories.

Claire Henry: This feels like an exciting time to be doing what we do and the stories we tell are important. We've seen that people are moving away from the drive to accumulate material things towards a desire to have meaningful experiences in places, with others. This is more true than ever after the isolation we’ve been subjected to during the pandemic.

Bethany Shepherd: We bring a sense of social responsibility to all our projects and believe that high-quality, memorable experiences and those that challenge dominant narratives can make a lasting impact on people’s lives and the health of the planet. We are particularly interested in working on projects that address the intersectional challenges facing society including equality, wellbeing and the climate emergency.

AM: What upcoming projects are you looking forward to?
Claire Healy: We’re very proud of a publication for Museums for Climate Action, part of COP26 in Glasgow, which features a concept we developed for a narrative experience. It’s called Muserialism and it tackles materialism, consumerism and its impact on the planet. It’s quite a playful exhibit with a serious question at its core—what if we treated our everyday objects like a museum collection, conserving, restoring and not throwing away without thinking? We’d love to put that exhibition on somewhere and reach an even wider audience.

AM: What was your creative approach to the design of BIAS?
Claire Healy: The exhibition design is inspired by the green screen and its role in constructing reality. Using green screen technologies images can be manipulated and realities constructed—a reminder that everything we see is a construction, even the gallery space.

Claire Henry: The evolution of the use of ‘green screen’ from photographic backdrops to its use in compositing—and the fact that AI is now acting without the need for it—also interested us. In the gallery, the walls and floor create a green envelope that acts as an immersive backdrop where the artworks and text appear to be floating, referencing the digital world. All the setworks, seating and plinths are green as if extruded from the space. The artworks and the technology that enables them are the only things that are not green, making them pop out as set pieces and emphasising the fact that each exhibit is a construct that is being presented to you as the visitor. As visitors move through the space they should feel as though they are floating, setting a reflective mood where they can have a raw encounter with the artworks.

Bethany Shepherd: The Science Gallery has a floor to ceiling glass facade spanning two levels, so from the street level you see into the entirely chroma key green gallery, which looks like a large set with intriguing artworks popping out against the green, enticing you in. The design breaks people out of their everyday mode and gets them thinking about the world around them, something the gallery team were eager to achieve.

Photo @Freddy Stevens

AM: Is BIAS your first project built in Ireland?
Claire Henry: We’re based between Dublin and London but we travel all over for projects. BIAS is our first project built in Ireland as Fadó Fadó but Claire [Healy] has previously worked on award-winning cultural projects in Ireland that are currently open to visit in Dublin. She was the Senior Exhibition Designer working with RAA on the National Library of Ireland’s Seamus Heaney: Listen Now Again exhibition at the Bank of Ireland Cultural and Heritage Centre on College Green; and also worked with Event on EPIC: The Irish Emigration Museum located in Dublin’s Docklands.

Claire Healy: We hope to work much more in Ireland as we see a big opportunity to apply our skills creating narrative environments to a whole range of areas so we’re very open to hearing about new projects, collaborations and opportunities.

Follow Fadó Fadó on Instagram and Twitter
Check out BIAS in person at the Science Gallery Dublin
Visit Science Gallery Dublin’s unique, interactive digital exhibition at BIAS online