StoryFutures China: UK-China Transnational Strategic Partnership for Immersive Storytelling in Museums and Cultural Institutions

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StoryFutures China brings together two of the world's leading cultural institutions - The National Gallery in the UK and Shanghai Science and Technology Museum in China - to research, prototype and develop immersive storytelling experiences that both enhance visitor experiences on-site as well as allow for the Gallery and the Museum to take experiences to the audience, wherever they are in the world. This groundbreaking collaboration will create two audience-facing immersive prototypes, one at each location, that are specifically designed to speak to local audiences as well as travel to their counterpart institution in the UK or China. In so doing, StoryFutures China will facilitate a new level of cultural exchange between the two countries by promoting an approach to visitor experiences that has the international visitor in mind as much as the nation's citizenry. Themed around a concern with "art in science" and "science in art and", this collaboration will enhance and translate artworks and historical artefacts for visitors by using immersive technologies to provide additional layers of informational depth and emotional engagement by revealing the stories behind some of each countries' national treasures. This project addresses major challenges for both the UK's and China's creative and cultural industries by examining how the disruptive capabilities of immersive technologies can be harnessed to produce new audience experiences, business models and cultural value that can drive economic growth in both countries. It draws on the unique strength and position of the successful StoryFutures project, funded by the UK's Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund, including a well-established collaborative model with The National Gallery, to promote an open innovation approach to developing immersive storytelling prototypes that respond to clearly identified audience behaviours and needs. By utilising StoryFutures' open innovation framework, this project will introduce novelty into large organisations' supply chains, develop new business models and create immersive prototypes that can be experienced and tested by thousands of visitors to promote better understandings and cultural exchange between countries. Moreover, the prototypes will stand as "use cases" for future collaborations between the UK and China and, within each country, represent scalable opportunities for the growing visitor experience economy at cultural and commercial institutions. In so doing, the project underscores the role of cultural institutions in promoting growth and innovation in the wider creative economy. By focusing on the themes of "art in science" and "science in art", StoryFutures China develops an area of major concern in both museums and art galleries, brokering a relationship that is collaborative rather than competitive. By bringing together cultural institutions from across sectors, the project will promote best practice and knowledge exchange in how best to harness the disruptive technologies of AR, MR and VR for visitor experiences and how to reach audiences away from the physical location of each institution. The project draws on the world-class research in design at Brunel, storytelling and audience insight at Royal Holloway and the long-standing expertise in the immersive tech by Shanghai Foremost Group. In particular, it builds on the success of the Virtual Veronese prototype developed by StoryFutures and The National Gallery: the insights from this project revealed that whilst an experience could uniquely blend the physical and the digital for visitors on site in the use of AR, the potential for VR was to take the Gallery to the audience wherever they may be.