The Brief – Immersive Heritage & Folklore in Wales
The aim over 6 weeks was to produce a coherent plan for a cross platform campaign that encompasses:
• 360 Video experience
• Location based audio experience
The ultimate mission was not just to find an audience and gain attention but to change behaviour & thinking, and encourage measurable action/interaction.
The central theme of the projects was to be in some way related to Welsh Heritage & Folklore and/or the work of the clients.
The team could take this brief in more or less any direction they liked, they could focus on a very individual human story, or a particular place or region or a moment in history. The only rules were that:
a/ the project must accommodate one of the briefs set out by the clients, and be something that they could at least align with their KPIs, or perhaps even formally endorse and/or commission
b/ the content must be based on a story or tale,
c/ audiences need to be moved to some kind of action – this could be to visit a site, explore more about a story or to further explore similar locations or content.
d/ the story should offer a consistent journey across platforms and a ‘way-in’ from every platform e.g. VR/360 experience leads to site visit, leads to audio experience…
The Team
The team comprised of students from across a range of disciplines all of whom were interested in how storytelling could be used to increase awareness and knowledge of Welsh folklore and heritage.
Week 1 – Introduction to the brief & Cardiff Tour
The Cardiff Heritage Tour
A local tour guide took the team on a tour of Cardiff and introduced them to some of the stories around Cardiff to get them thinking about storytelling and how this relates to locations and communities. They were then asked to go and reflect on this and pick 2 locations from the walk which they felt were interesting.
This was to start introducing them to some of the possible stories which they might work with but also to get them to experience retelling of these stories in the context of community.
Immersive Storytelling Hack
This was the introduction to the process and methodology that the team would be applying to the project over the 6 weeks. They were given a problem/brief and in teams were looking at possible solutions.
The Brief
The local tourism office would like to create immersive experiences which focus on retelling of historic stories around the city. These can be based on factual content or on myths and folklore. These can be either 360 video content or location-based experiences.
Meet the Clients
The team were then introduced to the clients and the briefs that they would be working towards. This was an opportunity to get to know what the clients were looking for and ask additional questions.
From this session there seemed to be common themes across both client briefs which is something that the team felt meant that they could look at combining these briefs, or create a project that met both briefs.
The Clients
Client: Literature Wales
About the client:
Literature Wales is the national company for the development of literature. Our vision is a Wales where literature empowers, improves and brightens lives.
We facilitate, fund, and directly deliver a literary programme across Wales. Our work includes inspiring communities through participation in literature, developing the skills and talents of writers, and celebrating Wales’ literary culture.
As an initiative to promote literary tourism, we developed the website Land of Legends using funding from Visit Wales. The website includes a story map that showcases the best of Welsh literature, culture, and myths in the places which created and inspired them.
The Problem:
Literature Wales has identified three priorities to focus our work and investment, which aim to create positive change in society through literature:
- Representation & Equality: addressing historical and structural inequalities in the sector and platforming diverse voices
- Health & Well-being: using the healing power of literature to support the well-being of our nation
- Climate Emergency: using the creative power of words to educate, challenge and inspire long-term change
The Challenge:
We are looking for an immersive experience that retells a story or piece of folklore related to a specific site or landscape local to the Cardiff area. The retelling of the story should contribute to one of our strategic priorities in some way – be it directly or indirectly.
We want you to have the freedom and confidence to approach these priorities according to your own interests and for you to have the opportunity to find and adapt a traditional story or piece of folklore that speaks to you. However, below are some examples of potential projects that you can use or might help you to develop your own ideas.
- Representation & Equality: retelling a story or narrative that has been historically overlooked or from a diverse voice/community
Example: Using immersive experiences to help audiences engage with the heritage of Tiger Bay, for example by retelling the story of the 1919 Cardiff ‘Race Riots’/Community Resistance
- Health & Well-being: Using immersive technology to improve accessibility to a site, allowing a wider audience to benefit from engaging with local folklore and heritage
Example: Using VR or 360-video to recreate a site without wheelchair access, such as the Tinkinswood or St Lythans Burial Chambers and the folklore surrounding these sites.
- Climate Emergency: retelling a story or piece of folklore that encourages an audience to connect to or protect a natural environment or landscape.
Example: Retell the story of the curse of Pantannas farm highlighting the importance of protecting our natural environment.
What the client wants to see:
We would like to see an immersive experience that uses immersive technology to retell a story or folklore which includes a strong narrative element and links to Wales’ literary culture.
We would like to host or link to the finished immersive experience from the Land of Legends website.
Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales comprises seven museums in Wales. The museum acts as a steward of cultural and natural heritage for the future generations of Wales.
We aim to tell inspiring stories through exhibitions and events. We aim to create experiences for everyone, and this means we consider usability, and aim to build physical and digital spaces that are accessible. We are working to decolonise our collections and improve our ability to serve those with physical disabilities as well as those who internet connectivity is impaired by either location or economic hardship. As an organisation we fully comply with the statutory requirements of the Welsh Language Standards.
The Problem:
There is no ‘National Museum of Contemporary Art’ in Wales, and Amgueddfa Cymru has been working in partnership with Arts Council Wales and Welsh Government to address that need and facilitate opportunities for works to be physically exhibited across Amgueddfa Cymru sites across Wales and with partner organisations.
We are not looking to build a physical new museum but are exploring ways to create an online contemporary art gallery for Wales. We’re interested in ways immersive storytelling can help us shift the focus away from galleries and out into the cities, towns, villages, and landscape of Wales.
We aim to explore this problem in a democratic and socially equitable way. During the pandemic we ran a project called ART 100. For this we invited our audiences to vote on which artworks they would like to see displayed at galleries around Wales once we reopened. From neolithic stone carving to contemporary art, the selection reflects the rich diversity and experience of life in Wales.
We have strict issues surrounding copyright – this means that any project can only engage with works from our approved list below.
The Challenge:
How do we create a rich storytelling experience around the artworks selected as part of our pandemic project Art 100?
What the client wants to see:
We want a project that works with copyright cleared works in the ART100 selection. This means we are interested in an audio experience that is influenced or inspired by those artworks that meet our copyright obligations. A list of these works is given in the background section below. We don’t mind if you work with just one or several of the works on this list.
We want to use storytelling to explore the links between some of the selected artworks and locations outside our galleries. We are interested in tours of places outside our galleries (these could be real or imagined) that link to artworks and welsh folklore.
We’re interested in creative and accessible approaches to immersive experiences that can be enjoyed by anyone, anywhere. We’d like to see how you’ve considered our Welsh language obligations, commitment to accessibility,
Week 2 – Understanding the problem
With the limited time available and the need to produce a good representation of the final proposed solutions to the briefs the team were introduced to the Design Sprint methodology, which breaks down the design process into 5 steps.
- Understand
- Diverge
- Decide
- Prototype
- Validate
The first thing the team needed to do was to better understand the problem they wanted to resolve.
This meant they needed to understand who this was for (users), what are their needs, what is the context, who are the competitors, what is the strategy.
Through working together as a team they were able to identify the main goal of the project and the questions that they wanted to try and answer as part of the development.
Masterclass – Matt Brown
Throughout the project development cycle there were masterclass sessions to help the team develop their knowledge and skills. This in turn would feed into the project development.
Matt Brown is an author and broadcaster based in the UK. Over the last six years, Matt has published seven books for kids that have been sold worldwide. In 2020, his book Mutant Zombies Cursed My School Trip won the FCBG Children’s Book Award, the only national book award that is voted for entirely by children. He has just published The Mab, an incredible new retelling of the Mabinogi for kids.
Week 3 – Ideation & Sketching
The next step of the project development cycle was to identify possible solutions, stories and experiences that the team could develop which met the client brief, the goal that they had identified and the questions that they wanted to try to answer.
Market Research & Ideation
To help inform some of the potential ideas which the team was to come up with it was necessary to better understand the current market and to be able to identify common design, narrative structures and good practice when developing immersive storytelling experiences.
The team were able to identify good principles as well as things to possibly avoid through market research, and through experiencing similar content as users.
Through this the team were able to start thinking about possible stories, themes and solutions which may may meet the client briefs.
Masterclass – Daniel Morden
In this session storyteller/author DANIEL MORDEN guided the team through his approach to adapting a tale so that the elements of a story which are interesting to an audience (or to the team) are emphasised.
Daniel Morden has been telling traditional stories for a living since 1989. He has toured the world, performing at such venues as Sydney Writers Festival, The National Theatre, Storymoja Nairobi & The Getty Centre (USA). He is an award-winning author of many books of folktales. In 2017 he was awarded The Hay Festival.
Traditional stories are a cornerstone of every culture, but often they were recorded hundreds of years ago…the kernel of a gripping story might be contained within an obscure, terse and mistranslated text.
Week 4
Day 3 of the Design Sprint is a challenging day, however, it is very productive. Most of the major decisions during the Sprint occur on the third day, which can cause stress levels to reach a breaking point for some participants. However, by the end of the day, the team should have a storyboard that serves as the guide for prototyping!
The main aims for this session were to:
- Critique the ideas from the previous session,
- Vote, discuss and troubleshoot the ideas,
- Decide on the solutions they wanted to prototype,
- Storyboard the solution.
The first task was to individually vote on each of the sketches and to then critique these as a group. This process allowed members of the team to voice their own opinions but also allowed for a quick decision to be made on what to take forward, whether this be a whole idea or elements of it.
In this whole process there is always a decider. Someone who makes the final decisions in relation to the project.
The decider(s) will have 3 ‘Super votes’ to vote on the ideas they believe should be taken forward to prototyping.
The sketches with the Super votes are the ones which are taken on to be developed further, whilst other sketches are left as maybe later options.
Storyboarding
In the afternoon the team were able to start planning the prototype. Before they thought about jumping straight into building and production.
The team took the ‘winning’ sketches and started to string them together into a coherent story of the user experience.
This comprised of about 9 panels that detailed the experience through visual representation and information.
The aim of the storyboard process is to help visualise the final prototype, spotting problems and points of confusion.
On a whiteboard, the team started to draw out panels. Starting in the top left panel. This is the first moment that users engage with your experience (web page, app store, QR code, printed advert).
They then added the end point, showing what happens at the end of the user experience? Call-to-action, impact etc.
Now the team filled in the rest, keeping to these guidelines:
- Work with what you have – resist inventing new ideas and just work with the good ideas you already came up with.
- Don’t write together – A storyboard should include rough headlines and important phrases, but don’t try to perfect your writing as a group. Either use the solution sketch information or leave until the next stage.
- Include just enough detail – Have enough detail in the storyboard so that questions do not arise when building the prototype. However, some details can be finalised when building.
- The Decider decides – You won’t be able to fit in every good idea and still have a storyboard that makes sense. Plus, you have limited time and cannot spend forever arguing. The Decider will make the majority of decisions but can for advice from the rest of the team and experts.
- When in doubt, take risks – Take risks when choosing what elements you want to building into the prototype. Skip easy wins in favour of big, bold bets that teach you more.
- Keep it 15 minutes or less – Each frame of the storyboard should be equivalent to 1 minute of the users time. This is to keep the testing time short but this is not always the case, so consider this a rough timeframe.
And now they had a storyboard. Which they could use to help inform the next stage.
Masterclass – Richard P. Jones (Vision Fountain)
Vision Fountain founded in 2017 to introduce innovative story-telling to marginalised, socially and economically deprived communities.
Richard’s role involves coming up with new and innovative digital methods to represent and present stories that are held within communities, places and buildings. The use of 3D modelling of objects and buildings and the ability to link 3D models to online portals with VR / AR technology offers endless possibility, when combined with first class story-telling.
In this masterclass the team were introduced to some of the design and storytelling considerations when developing for immersive experiences.
Week 5
Once the team had decided on the theme, the story and what it is they wanted to try and achieve, it was time to move on to the production/prototyping of the immersive experiences.
As per the brief for the project, and the briefs outlined by the clients, the team were working towards creating both an on-site immersive experience, focused on using sound as the primary storytelling method, and a 360-video experience which could be viewable at any location, making it more accessible to a larger demographic.
The focus of both of these was to link the storytelling to the locations in a way that supports visualisation of the story being told.
The team used professional 360 cameras and ambisonic microphones to gather assets which would ultimately be used as part of both the 360 video and on-site experiences.
This experience developed a better understanding of the production process, the limitation and considerations when developing this type of storytelling experience.
The team also worked on scripting the dialogue for the character/narrator of the experiences, Taliesin. Researching the history of the character as well as some of the stories that relate to them, which helped to inform the language and approach that they took when developing the script.
Masterclass – Matthew Robinson
As part of the production and prototyping portion of the project, the team were joined by Matthew who guided them through some of the production techniques and considerations when producing 360 video.
Matt Robinson is an independent filmmaker and a video producer for BeLink, an immersive media company .
BeLink is an immersive media company, creating and delivering stunning 8K virtual tours, using state of the art 360 technology. Offering cost-effective and high quality 360 Videos, Photography and models to create interactive 360 immersive tours of any space.
Week 6
This was the final push for the team in developing the prototypes that they felt would best showcase the type of experience that they felt would benefit the stories and the client brief.
The team worked together to develop the 360-video experience and the on-site experiences using the platform Echoes, creating an immersive AR audio experience.
The team worked on post-production processes for the 360-video and began developing the experiences to work on VR headsets as well as through mobile and desktop.
Working together the team were able to create experiences which not only showcased the innovative and immersive way to retell folklore and historical stories, making it more engaging for younger audiences but also demonstrated how this can be done in a way which allows for quick, agile, and iterative design, and that it can be done with little to no previous experience.
