A heritage VR experience connecting Middleton’s industrial past with the lives of weavers in Myanmar.
The research revealed a connection nobody had told before: the same British Empire that crushed the handloom weavers of Middleton in 1812 built the weaving institution in Burma that the Amarapura weavers later refused to let destroy them. Two communities.
The same resistance. A century and a half apart.
Presented at Middleton Fringe Festival
How might we design an immersive experience that brings local history to life and makes it engaging for young and old alike?
The answer we arrived at was virtual reality but VR as a social, guided, conversational experience rather than a solitary headset-on-sofa encounter. The experience was designed to be shared: a small group, a pot of Myanmar milk tea, a conversation before and after.
WORLD ONE
A Middleton handloom workshop, 1812
Visitors stepped into a domestic loomshop on Long Street, Middleton : rThe attack on Burton’s Mill reconstructed from Bamford’s testimony.
WORLD TWO
The radical history of Middleton & Myanmar
The thread connecting Lancashire and Burma : trade, empire, resistance made visible across two centuries. Sixty thousand people at St Peter’s Field. The cavalry charge. The Middleton banner : Unity and Strength; Liberty and Fraternity
WORLD THREE
A weaving house in contemporary Myanmar
Visitors arrived in Amarapura where the loom was still running. The same acheik wave patterns, the same tradition the weavers refused to give up was still alive, and they could see it.
The VR experience was structured as a spatial gallery with six thematic rooms. Moving through the gallery meant the further you walked, the closer the historical strands converged.
1
Working Class Movement
Library
Salford. Newspapers, pamphlets, and radical print from the period of the Luddite uprisings and Peterloo : the voice of the movement in its own words.
2
People's History Museum
Manchester. The Peterloo Scarf, political cartoons, and artefacts from the reform movement objects held by real people on the day of the cavalry charge.
3 Chetham's Library
Manchester. The Hay Scrapbook Vol. 7 — the private papers of an anti-reformist magistrate, containing a Luddite stamp from 1812 pressed by the very hands we were telling the story of.
