The Digital Ghost Hunt

The Digital Ghost Hunt is an immersive storytelling experience that transforms coding and digital technology from something foreign and mysterious into a tool of the imagination. In its first implementation, the Digital Ghost Hunt immersive experience will be realised in the historic Battersea Arts Centre (BAC), with a narrative that explore the building's rich historical memory using the creative spirit of an earlier era of open-ended technological experimentation. The key objective of The Digital Ghost Hunt is to present technology to students as an empowering tool, where coding emerges as - and fuses with - different forms of storytelling. It seeks to shift the context in which Key Stage 2 students see coding, engaging groups who may be uninterested in or feel excluded by digital technology, to open up an imaginative space through play for them to discover the creative potential of technology on their own terms.

For this pilot project, we will publish code libraries and instructions for affordable hardware kits, and write an initial narrative formed around the fictive Ministry of Paranormal Hygiene. Learning facilitators will appear in class as a team of Ministry scientists, led by the Deputy Undersecretary of Paranormal Hygiene, to initiate their training. Using Raspberry Pi microprocessor kits, their first task will be to program their detection devices. During this phase students will be introduced to the basic logic of programming: variables, looping and decision structures. They will be taught how to use the high-level API (Application Interface) to query their sensors for information, store it and display it. The emphasis will be on students taking ownership of their devices, deciding which of the ghost detectors they want to build and how it works.

When they are ready, students will begin their first hunt at a haunted historical building. Students will use the devices they've built to discover clues and research the history of the building to discover the ghost's identity. The ghost will in turn communication with them, given life by actors, practical effects and the poltergeist potential of the Internet of Things. Together students will unravel the mystery of the ghost's haunting, and help set it free.

The impact for the project will target three types of audiences and follow three main pathways: students and teachers in primary education, creative industry practitioners in Augmented Reality and Immersive Theatre, and Maker culture community. The Ghost Hunt is not only a single discrete experience but a structure and process whose parts can be separated, modified and remixed for many different audiences and uses.

Educators in the UK are struggling to deliver the ambitious new Computer Science curriculum, and the problem is especially acute for groups who have felt excluded from coding and geek culture. The code and course materials produced by the Ghost Hunt will be relevant to the current Key Stage 2 syllabus and would serve as a resource for teachers to engage their students with technology in new and innovative ways. The teacher materials will be aimed at educators with a non-STEM background, to encourage the same kind of interdisciplinary experimentation that gave birth to the Ghost Hunt. The goal of the Ghost Hunt is not only to create fun, practical materials for the teaching of coding, but to encourage both teachers and students to see computer science in a fundamentally more creative way.

Separate from yet connected to the educational material will be the immersive experience developed during the scratch. With the prototype being developed during this project we plan to create a framework for dedicated immersive experiences adaptable for all ages. The material and technical knowledge gained during the scratch will form the basis for partnerships in the heritage and creative industry sectors. Through its longstanding relationship with KIT Theatre, the project will be collaborating with the Battersea Arts Centre on their HLF funded heritage trails, and exploring possibilities for applying the lessons learned during the project to create bespoke ticketed experiences such as museum lates and immersive Augmented Reality experiences at festivals.

The project's DIY aesthetic and emphasis on the ownership of technology is a natural fit to the online maker community. The 3d models commissionedcommissoned for creating the hunting devices will be released alongside the project's source code. The project plans to build on this foundation by running contests to encourage makers and artists to build new and exciting additions of the ghost hunt devices, as well as taking the initial blueprint and remixing it themselves for their own projects.