Penguin Academy

Living Coasts in Torquay commissioned HMC Interactive with an exciting project involving some friendly fluffy creatures.

The brief: whatever we did had to be educational and it had to be interactive. We came up with a dynamic series of interactives consisting of three major exhibits: a website, an interactive floor and a ‘penguin training facility’.

Adelie, Chinstrip, Emperor, Gentoo and Macaroni are the protagonists on the Penguin Academy website games, with further games also available and to be unlocked at Living Coasts by entering a secret code.

The Penguin Training Facility allows you to choose your own penguin to nurture, grow and teach it a skill to survive in the wild. Use the touchscreens to learn about penguins’ lifecycle of feeding, breeding and evading predators.

We really had a fantastic experience with HMC, the whole purpose was to come up with a concept that was lively, interactive, but that also taught our visitors about marine pollution issues and they've really managed to do that for us!Elaine Lambert — Director, Living Coasts

Visitors’ response has been extraordinary and Penguins have become incredibly popular with Penguinacademy.org.uk receiving over 10,000 visitors since its launch. Dwell time has dramatically increased in the area at Living Coasts in which the Penguin Academy is situated and hundreds of penguins are still competing for top spot on the leaderboards!