Immersive Fellowships: Storyality

  • StoryFutures
  • February 2nd 2023

Storyality is an innovative, highly accessible, audience engagement platform for the heritage sector, reflecting Arcade’s core mission of ‘connecting people to place through play’. It uses augmented reality technologies to offer a new way of immersing audiences into the narratives of historical locations, whether on-site, at home or anywhere else, using nothing more than their mobile device.

Storyality can be implemented at multiple heritage or other locations of interest across the UK and beyond. Its content management system enables non-technical staff at such locations to create their own stories to engage their audiences.

This prototype was in partnership with UK Parliament. Using the majestic Westminster Hall as its physical canvas, it offers multiple perspectives on historical events and enables users to forge their own experience based on their responses to the narratives laid out in front of them. They experience these stories spatially, physically moving from one to the next, choosing which perspectives to engage with and which doorways to explore next.

Our goal was to research the potential of this novel form of immersive storytelling with audiences, and explore the technologies required to deliver it in a scalable way.

Storyality was tested with remote as well as physical audiences: user response was overwhelmingly positive. They particularly enjoyed how different it is from traditional heritage interpretation, its ability to play with their sense of proximity to Westminster Hall despite being many miles away from it, the feeling of ‘stepping back through time’ to hear the stories of characters from centuries past, and their ability to determine their own path through the experience.

With thanks to the UK Parliament for its time, support and access to its collections.

Hardware

iOS devices

Team

Jon Meggitt, Arcade Co-Founder & CEO - Project & Technical Lead
Simon Hobbs, Arcade Co-Founder & Chief Design Officer - Design Lead
Alex Book, Arcade Co-Founder & Chief Strategy Officer - Strategy Lead & Narrative Designer
James Harvey - Lead AR Developer
Frans Huntink - App Developer
Dr Matthew Smith - Heritage Consultant
Angela Chan - Storytelling & Creative Diversity Consultant

Partners

UK Parliament
StoryFutures
Royal Holloway, University of London

Image credits

Great Reform Act, 1832 Parliamentary Archives, London HL/PO/PU/1/1832/2&3W4n147
Petition for Votes for Women, 1884 Parliamentary Archives, London HL/PO/6/11A
Photograph of Samuel Laing Parliamentary Archives, London PHO/11/2/47
John Stuart Mill 1806-1873 Political Economist, Monochrome line etching by Paul Adolphe Rajon after an original by George Frederic Watts © Parliamentary Art Collection, WOA 1752
New Dawn, Sculpture By Mary Branson © Mary Branson, Photo credit Parliamentary Art Collection, WOA S753

Images of Westminster Hall ©UKParliament

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