Mixed Reality for Cultural Heritage Workshop

AR, VR & XR for museums, galleries, libraries, and archives to support cultural heritage

On Thursday 29 September 2022, I co-hosted the eXtending Reality: Designing Future Cultural Heritage Experiences workshop at the Technische Universiteit Delft (TUD) in the Netherlands, with the aim of bringing together minds from different backgrounds related to cultural heritage, from researchers to practitioners from the domains of science, design, and the arts.

We conducted a series of parallel interactive, creative sessions on 5 case studies brought to us by the Allard Pierson Museum, the design agency NorthernLight, Utrecht University, and our own TUD. Among the 50+ participants, there were art historians and curators from the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, the Van Gogh Museum, the Kunstmuseum, the Stedelijk, the Océ, and the Mauritshuis. As far as Dutch cultural heritage goes, we couldn’t have asked for more!

Together, we explored the future of extended reality (XR) technologies in the context of galleries, libraries, archives, and museums, as well as their collections. Participants produced hundreds of ideas, imagining how these technologies could be deployed to change the way we interact with and learn about rich cultural heritages.

This is a recap of the day, with some Mixed Reality (XR) design inspirations and takeaways!