Situation

The British Museum is the world’s largest receiver of stolen goods. With over 8 million objects, that’s a lot of looted artefacts. For for centuries, we’ve only heard the imperialist version of they got there. An equitable environment can only be created when silenced voices express the intergenerational trauma caused by colonial loot.

Brief

To place VICE World News at the forefront of conversations around colonialism and challenge dominant cultures by opening up dialogue to countries around the world to create a balance in the way history has been told.

Objectives

1. Give a platform to underrepresented minority voices to share their accounts of artefacts that belong to their country.

2. Re-ignite the ongoing conversation on repatriation and postcolonialism on social media, with VICE championing marginalised voices.

3. Educate young people about the untold side of history using a tool as accessible as Instagram filters to tell unfiltered stories.

Leveraging the very technology that adds cat whiskers to a selfie, The Unfiltered History Tour makes use of Augmented Reality in Instagram Filters to challenge centuries of Imperial narrative. However, instead of adding dog ears to a selfie, the same technology was re-engineered to scan and identify life-sized 3D artefacts in differing light conditions throughout the day.

Using their phones, visitors to the British Museum can scan disputed artefacts through these Instagram AR filters to teleport them back to their homeland, as experts from the country of their origin play tour guide in an immersive audio-visual experience.

Those who aren’t at the British Museum can unfilter history from wherever they are in the world, with a 10-part extended podcast series and immersive content hosted on the Unfiltered History Tour website.

The British Museum’s one-sided, imperialist narrative could only be tackled with authenticity. So, expert voices from 10 countries - Jamaica, Easter Island, Egypt, Greece, Nigeria, Ghana, Iraq, India, China and Australia - were brought on to fill the gaps in the lopsided mainstream narrative. This would enable us to gather traction across a global youth audience, including the 10 home countries these artefacts belonged to.

Our objective was to orchestrate PR in a way that starts the fire around the campaign as a fusion of art, technology, and audacity to rewrite history. A project clearly greater than the sum of its parts. Publications that catered to a wide field - ranging from tech, political history, art history, design and culture were shortlisted to amplify the key message - unfilter a side of history never taught before in textbooks or anywhere else.

Implementation:

The Instagram filters were developed by a 100-person strong team working remotely for 18 months across 10 time zones. AR technicians accounted for changing light conditions inside the museum by developing an Instagram filter based on real-time weather using LiDAR technology (Light Detection and Ranging) to dynamically adapt to the changing environment at the museum, in a first of its kind Instagram Filter that blends satellite data with Augmented Reality.

Timeline

Launched in December 2021.

Placement

Instagram Augmented Reality filters to be scanned by visitors at the British Museum, through their phones and podcast series on all popular audio platforms like Spotify & Apple Music.

Scale

Every Museum visitor can take the Tour from their phones, revealing the true history of disputed artefacts. Those not at the Museum could still partake in immersive audio-visual experiences and extended podcasts hosted on The Unfiltered History Tour microsite.

In its first month, the campaign has seen

$631K earned media

32 million social impressions

40% rise in TikTok followers and 49% increase in total impressions on Instagram

21,583 podcast downloads and 5,200 filter uses

Change in behaviour

According to a 2014 survey, 59% of Britons were proud of the British Empire. In a poll conducted weeks after the Tour was launched, 59% of Britons said they believed the Parthenon Marbles (part of the Tour) belonged in Greece, a sharp turn in the opposite direction. The podcast series let us go a lot deeper with the project and give audiences something heavily educational, not found in British history textbooks.

What some users had to say after taking the tour:

“Clever and a brilliant way of teaching historical reality”

“Confronts and challenges colonial origins.”

“Hearing the past told by multiple perspectives gives depth.”

“A much needed resource.”