Immersive Dickens: Creating a Prototype, Mixed-Reality Experience for 15-18 year-olds

How can we bring digital technology, performance and curatorial practice together to give young people a sense of creative agency when encountering a historical object?

This interdisciplinary, visitor-focused project draws together the curatorial, theatrical, design and technological expertise of three leading partners: the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), the UK's national museum of art, design and performance; Punchdrunk Enrichment, pioneers of educational and community-based immersive theatre; and award-winning creative technology studio, The Workers.
Together, the partners intend to prototype a mixed reality environment for the display of archive material - in this case the handwritten manuscripts of Charles Dickens - that will give young people aged 15-18 a sense of creative agency when encountering an historical object.

The manuscripts are the best evidence we have of the creative process of one of the UK's most important and renowned authors, whose work has continuing relevance for young people today. Dickens was an observer of urban material culture and life in a period of rapid technological innovation and widespread financial insecurity, a writer who explored themes that still resonate today. However, the act of writing and redrafting on paper is becoming an increasingly rare (perhaps even obsolete) creative practice. The manuscripts might show us how an author revises and imaginatively iterates - but that process needs to be unlocked for visitors.
By prototyping an immersive experience, centred on the manuscript, we will explore how digital technologies can augment immersive theatre techniques to create a performative environment, one that does not necessarily rely on performers. We will answer the following questions:
How can the interactions between people and objects within a digital and a physical space drive a narrative in a museum context?
How can digital technologies put the museum object at the heart of an immersive experience?
How can the museum object become part of a performance?

Through discovering and understanding Dickens's creative process, we aim to inspire self-expression - an important strand of Punchdrunk Enrichment's projects. We intend for this experience to have a life beyond museum for the children involved - that it will make a lasting appeal to their creative spirit. Getting children to talk about their experiences, encouraging them to write stories, discuss them and expand their vocabulary have been important motivations in Punchdrunk Enrichment's work to date.

This research will be of future creative and commercial value by potentially informing the development of a major exhibition on Charles Dickens at the Museum (2020) and the future display of the V&A's nineteenth-century collections, as well as inform practice beyond the museum itself, and is of institutional significance because it will allow us to not only interrogate the latest technologies, but also to help shape and drive innovation in this area with our peers in the creative and technological industries. We will gauge how methodologies identified through the project will help forge new creative practice, within the museum and beyond, and consolidate our findings in a case study and preliminary toolkit.

The research will help deepen links between creative industries and research sectors by presenting a case study and toolkit to understand, experiment with and exploit immersive technologies to create new experiences. It will help show how the next generation of digital content and services can be conceptualised, produced and exploited within the UK creative economy.

This Project will lay the groundwork for an immersive exhibition on Charles Dickens (currently under discussion), collaboratively developed by the V&A and Punchdrunk Enrichment, which would target family and youth audiences. It will also align with two current research projects led by the V&A Research Institute and has the potential to inform the future display of the V&A's 19th century collections. Beyond the immediate benefits which it will deliver for the creative partners and a focused group of practitioners, teachers and young people, its potential impact, once methodologies are scaled up and applied in a major exhibition or gallery display, is likely to be far greater.

The project team recognizes the cultural and economic value of content and user-led immersive experience design, and will engage actively with creative industry peers to ensure that the project is supported, publicised, and diffused. The process of iterative design prototyping and user-research will result in a case study and preliminary tool kit that can be used as a training device and stimulus for practitioners working in heritage interpretation, education, youth theatre and interaction design. The researchers will share not only the lessons learnt from the case study project, but offer methodologies and technical solutions that can be applied to future projects. The toolkit will enable the successful development of further immersive educational displays and performances. The application of iterative design process to exhibition development is an innovative step for the V&A which has the potential to become a model for new, participatory, modes of display curation. The project's indirect role in capacity building will encourage and enable future collaborations between heritage organisations and creative industry and technology partners.

This project enables the partners, all sector-leading organizations, to engage with local educators and student audiences. Through the collaborative efforts of this project, these audiences will benefit from engagement with creative industry professionals and museum collections, and contribute to a balanced output of research. Students of English language and literature, creative writing, drama and history will benefit from engagement in the project, and will gain opportunities for personal development and career insights. The project aims to build students' confidence when interacting with historical content and texts and help teachers to use historical collections and performance practices to support creative learning.

Dedicated research webpages on all partner sites and a project blog hosted by the V&A will allow a wider public and professional audience to follow the progress of the research and access the final case study and toolkit. Participating students will also benefit from the opportunity to contribute to the project blog and the recognition given to their contribution on these online forums. From this exposure on the V&A website, which attracts c.13 million sessions per year, the project will gain considerable traction and reach global audiences.