Re-invigorating a youth exhibition on a tight budget and schedule.

ILHMEC’s Harvey L. Miller Family Youth Exhibition helps students 8-13 learn skills to stand up to bullying and explores the larger issues of inclusion and exclusion.

It’s a highly interactive space for kids to foster leadership skills, empathy, self-esteem, and positive decision-making. The ILHMEC reached out to Trillium to help refresh the space and incorporate new activities. We responded with a range of highly graphic video elements.

Colorful video attracts visitors with a positive message.

One issue Trillium helped the museum overcome was the fact that the exhibit was hard to find, off of the main route through the building. They needed to let people know that there was another exhibit, with a brighter message, just down the hall from the somber main story of the Holocaust and anti-semitism. Trillium created a bright, empathetic beacon, not only as an effective direction finder, but also as a guide for the soul.

Providing a segue between the somber main exhibit of the Holocaust Museum and its bright and colorful children’s exhibit, this video was designed to introduce parents and kids to the motivational theme of the exhibit. Graphically, it sets out the places where we can all have influence: school, neighborhood and community. It then asks visitors to be “upstanders” and exercise “the power of one.”

Client: Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center

Category: Museum, Video

“Trillium Productions were amazing to work with. We presented them with a tight budget, tight timeline, and an ambitious idea, and they returned to us fantastic results. They are intelligent, insightful, and clever, and have all of the resources at their fingertips to create the best possible product.”

John Tweedy
Exhibitions Manager
Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center

Activity Room Video Draws Attention & Gives Directions

The exhibit also has an activity room where families and kids get to solve a puzzle made of large soft blocks. It models good and bad behaviors in a lunchroom setting. The lunchroom is often the place where kids often get the message whether they are “in” or “out” of the social scene. Our job was to help explain the three-dimensional puzzle activity to visitors when docents aren’t available to help. We used a “lunch tray cam” to give an intimate point of view.

School Locker Interactives

Trillium also created media for the exhibit’s locker interactives. Visitors must get the right “combination” to each locker by answering questions. Upon opening the lockers, they see a small diorama with a video that tells the story of individuals who stood up and made a difference, including:

  • Miep Gies, who preserved Anne Frank’s diaries.
  • Rosa Parks, whose brave peaceful resistance on a Montgomery, Alabama bus, helped ignite the civil rights movement.
  • The Marcellino Family, whose persistent efforts helped pass “Rosa’s Law” to erase the word “retarded” from official government documents.
  • The Buder Sisters, who reached out to Olivia, very depressed young girl who was the victim of constant, cruel bullying. They urged fellow students to write letters to Olivia. It set off an overwhelming chain of reaction. They compiled hundreds of inspiring letters to the girl—she received over 3,000—including some from the bullies, in a book, Letters to a Bullied Girl: Messages of Healing and Hope.
  • Hudson Taylor, one of the greatest collegiate wrestlers in the US. Though straight, Hudson began wearing the equality sticker from the Human Rights Campaign on his headgear as a sign of solidarity for gay athletes, who suffer from homophobia. His act gained attention from the media. He founded and continues to run Athlete Ally, with the mission of educating, encouraging and empowering straight athlete allies to combat homophobia and transphobia in sports.