COOPERATIVE INNOVATIONS

For the past couple of months, I have been working with Cooperative Innovations, an immersive technology studio with a multidisciplinary BAFTA award-winning team that create games, story and e-learning experiences. After receiving a grant from Innovate UK, Cooperative Innovations invited me to help develop content for their brand new digital platform ‘Curatours.’

Curatours opens up the virtual doors of popular cultural institutions, museums, galleries and heritage sites to offer an immersive digital experience. Avatars, VR headsets and 3D digital worlds are no longer the preserve of videogames but have become a vital tool for helping cultural institutions connect with audiences. In a virtual environment, visitors can skip queues, get closer to artefacts, explore behind scenes and put questions to the experts on live tours - and they can do it alongside friends, family or even their classroom.

Inside the Curatours museum demo, with the friendly Curatours guide.

The early part of my contract was spent ideating grand possibilities and dreaming up lots of the different experiences that could be created in VR for cultural venues - the drawing board (in spatial of course!) was full of thoughts about escape rooms, treasure hunts and virtual fashion shows.

My time more recently has focussed on producing scripts for a tour of The Hill House in Helensburgh, one of Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s most famous buildings, currently managed and maintained by The National Trust for Scotland. The Trust has been taking 3D scans of the building and the pieces of art inside as part of ongoing conservation work, this has given Curatours plenty of data to work with.

I have been researching the house and Mackintosh’s work, to gain a deeper understanding of the significance of this building and the fabulous objects it contains in order to write experiences that provide the audience with imaginative, informative and interesting interactive engagements for learning and play.

I have also been scripting AI ‘tour guide’ chatbots, experimenting with story templates, the characterisation of chatbots and levels of audience personalisation within an experience.

I look forward to sharing more in the future…