Beyond the Glass Case
How AR and Volumetric Video Can Transform Museums and Cultural Storytelling
Museums and cultural organisations have always been custodians of memory - gateways to the past, interpreters of the present, and explorers of the future. But today, they are navigating a fast-evolving cultural landscape shaped by shifting audience expectations, funding pressures, and the need for greater inclusivity and engagement.
Francis Barber
From an enslaved childhood in Jamaica to a free man and one of Britain’s first Black school teachers and elected officials.
The Challenges: Relevance, Reach, and Representation
At the heart of the challenge is relevance. In a world saturated with digital content and competing experiences, how can museums continue to matter? Traditional formats—glass cases, text panels, and fixed routes—can struggle to capture the imagination of audiences raised on interactivity and immersion.
Representation is another pressing issue. Many museums are grappling with how to share histories that have been marginalised or excluded. These stories may be too politically sensitive, too contemporary, or simply too difficult to integrate into the physical and interpretive fabric of existing exhibitions.
Finally, there is the question of reach. How do institutions connect with people who may never walk through their doors—because of geography, socio-economic barriers, or a sense that these spaces are “not for them”?
Ralph Harris
Recording the story of Francis Barber for Lichfield Time Travellers AR tour.
New Technologies, New Possibilities
Beyond traditional interpretive techniques, this is where layered digital storytelling approaches and technologies like volumetric video and augmented reality (AR) come into play—not as gimmicks or distractions, but as powerful tools for extending storytelling beyond traditional boundaries.
Volumetric video allows for the capture of real humans and performances in full 3D with sound, creating lifelike digital presences that can inhabit both physical or virtual spaces. Combined with AR, which layers digital content onto the real world through mobile devices or headsets, these technologies can transform museum spaces—and the world beyond them—into immersive storytelling platforms.
Crucially, they offer ways to:
Amplify Underrepresented Voices: Stories that have been historically silenced can be brought vividly to life without needing to alter permanent exhibitions. A visitor can encounter a digital performance of a community member, activist, or historical figure right alongside original artefacts, adding layers of context, meaning and emotional connection.
Reimagine the Museum Space: Rather than changing what’s on the walls or in the cases, institutions can overlay new narratives and perspectives onto existing collections and architecture. AR turns the museum into a living canvas, inviting reinterpretation and new exploration without replacing the ‘power of the real’ that visitors come to these spaces to experience.
Extend Beyond the Walls: With AR, the museum doesn’t have to stop at the museum. Stories can unfold in public spaces, in schools, in homes—meeting audiences where they are and opening up new ways to recontextualise cultural heritage assets and stories in places where they have most relevance and meaning – on the street where it happened, in the place it was found, among the people where this story originated. Cultural heritage becomes ambient, accessible, and alive.
Inspire, Challenge, Delight: Immersive storytelling through AR and volumetric video is not only informative; it’s emotional and engaging. It creates encounters that can surprise and move people, combining heritage and performing/visual art, making intangible cultural heritage tangible in new ways that spark new ways of thinking and feeling about ourselves and the world.
Lichfield Time Travellers
Meeting Francis/Ralph on the way to his favourite fishing spot at the pools in Lichfield.
A Tool for Transformation
These technologies are not an end in themselves. They’re a means of deepening the museum’s mission: to educate, to provoke, to include. They enable institutions to honour the physicality and authenticity of their collections while reaching toward the future.
In a time when cultural organisations are being called upon to do more with less, and to speak to more people with greater care, AR and volumetric video offer a path forward. Not by replacing what’s already there, but by expanding what’s possible—story by story, place by place.