Mixed Reality at Marble Hill House

We experimented with the use of augmented reality technology and live theatre to explore and decolonise Marble Hill’s complex history…

Mixed Reality was a research project which took place from 2022-2023. English Heritage partnered with Brunel University, University of Essex and Historic Deerfield to work on a research and development project looking at how immersive digital technology and live theatre can contribute to decolonising heritage sites and their stories.

Our primary objective was to create an engaging, immersive digital media experience at Marble Hill which could help to decolonise the site for visitors, revealing the site’s unseen connections to the transatlantic slave trade. Mixed Reality digital technology offered a powerful metaphor: a site’s links to empire or slavery are often unnoticed, but can be made visible and shared with audiences, in the same way the digital layer in mixed reality is made visible through technology.

The project created a new piece of site-specific Mixed Reality immersive promenade theatre (when the audience move from place to place as part of the performance), called Sancho’s Journey, linking material objects in Marble Hill House, like the mahogany staircase, with eighteenth-century England’s connection to the Triangular Trade.

Interventions from Ghanaian cultural heritage such as Anansi the spider, transformed the “real” 18th century world of abolitionist and writer Ignatius Sancho and Lady Betty Germaine (pictured), both real historical figures, using the imaginative freedom of theatre and digital media. The use of the augmented reality headsets and live theatre enabled a dialogue to take place, in which Betty Germaine, a wealthy aristocratic collector of antiquities, is forced to confront the terrible human cost of her fashionable lifestyle – the drinking of coffee, the use of mahogany, the meaning of investing in the South Sea Company etc by Ignatius Sancho, an African-born business man who lived in the nearby area.

The experience reframed the story of the house, sharing the cultural heritage of the enslaved Africans and indigenous people whose forced labour helped create the wealth that built Marble Hill.

Young people as consultants

From the outset of the project, we knew it was really important that Sancho’s Journey had a steering group and sounding board of individuals with diverse lived experience and knowledge.

We worked with a group of six paid young consultants from International Slavery Museum’s youth forum, whose role was to collaborate with the project team by assisting in creative idea and discussion sessions on the project storylines and to give feedback and input on the development of the project.

These were young people with a range of backgrounds – some were freelance creative practitioners; some were undergraduate students and a couple were masters students. All were curious, probing and ready to challenge.

As well as helping shape the project, we created sessions that would help the young people further develop their own understanding of decolonisation in heritage spaces and broaden their professional network as they learnt from different external facilitators.

The group attended a screening of The Ancestors, visited Kenwood House and Portchester Castle (pictured), as well as Marble Hill House which was all a part of their journey understanding the different ways history can be decolonised in heritage spaces.

One piece of the group’s feedback was that the augmented reality should introduce the realities of the environment the enslaved worked in back into the house. The group felt that the jungle should play a significant part in the virtual world we were creating to demonstrate the cyclical nature of the building of a house like this in the 18th century.

They were keen to highlight the importance of bringing in the roots of the mahogany tree and all its sacred and spiritual associations, as well as a tiger living in the forest the tree was felled from. This would bring into the house an element of its history that can only be appreciated through the medium of technology in this way. This was incorporated into the digital design assets for the final performances and was later commented on in general evaluation as one of the most moving parts.

Because this was a research and development project, Sancho’s Journey ran for one exclusive week in September 2023, and other young people, community groups, volunteers and staff were invited to test it out at Marble Hill.

At the end of the project, we had a discussion with our young consultants about the broader legacy of the project, who asked – what should come next? And how do we continue with this momentum to create wider change?

Since the culmination of the project, the youth engagement team have helped to organise a ‘Decolonising Heritage Practice through Performance’ workshop at Marble Hill, in which heritage professionals from across the country who have experience in decolonising practice, met to discuss their own work, and hear about our process and learnings from Sancho’s Journey.

Really excitingly, Sancho’s Journey got shortlisted for a Museums and Heritage Award 2024 – ‘the best use of digital’– and one of our young consultants was able to attend and represent the rest of the cohort! Sadly we didn’t win, but it was a great experience and really affirming to see that the rest of the sector recognises this as exciting work to be doing.

Our nomination!

Our South East & London Youth Participation Officer (YPO) Chania, North YPO (Kate), and young consultant Ammarah