We set out to close the gender gap in statuary. To do this, we created a collaborative augmented reality platform that allows designers, developers, gender studies experts, culture jammers and historians to come together to discover and build AR statues of women to augment the currently male-dominated medium, worldwide.

We partnered with best-of-class tech developer Current Studios to design the first ever grounded, 3D augmented reality statues. We then partnered with Code Liberation (a noted international female hacker crew) and New York-based Girl Scout Troop 3484 to design and develop additional statues. All statues were shared with and vetted by the New York Historical Society before being placed in Central Park. Tina Brown, editor, journalist and founder of the Women In The World Summit broke ground on the project by placing an AR statue of Maria Tallchief, beside Dante in New York’s Dante Park. Since then, more than 50 AR statues of women have been placed in countries all over the globe. The project will continue to grow and collaborate in years to come. Our twitter presence continues to grow, having deployed more than 100 tweets in the first 90 days of the program.

The Whole Story Project launched with great social buzz at the Women In The World Summit. The buzz lead to an invite to become the app of record for The National Collaborative for Women’s History Sites, unfolding now through 2020. The UN has also expressed interest in setting up international hack-a-thons to be held throughout 2017 and beyond. Organic statue submissions have begun to roll in through the open, collaborative platform and the app has now been written about in Campaign, Little Black Book, NYT, Shots and Cynopsis.

Develop a collaborative tech platform, accessible through mobile devices, curated by accredited historians and cultural institutes, shared by designers and developers, worldwide, to architect, design, place and share the whole story of world history, through statuary.

Situation:

92% of US statues commemorate men and the numbers aren’t much different, globally. Further, gender bias continues to create major barriers for women all over the world.

Brief: Design an inclusive, open-source platform that connects women via technology, allowing them help create the past, present and future with a toolkit that lets them identify, design and place AR statues of historic women, all over the world.

Objectives  

1. Develop a digital toolkit for persons aged 7-97, allowing them to augment a currently one-sided/male narrative on an emerging tech platform: shared AR.

2. Invite and excite females from every background to become collaborators in (re) writing their own history and bridging the gender gap.

3. Engage accredited sources in history, political science, gender studies, art, design and tech to collaborate in making these stories.