So the latest of our after hours events was born. Aimed at a thrill-seeking (16+) audience, NIGHTWATCHERS is an edgy and provocative, hour-long night-time experience at the Tower of London, which ran for seven nights from 29 October. It plays around with the concept of watchers and the watched, and is set in a shadowy world of state surveillance, drawing from both modern society and the paranoia-fuelled Elizabethan spy network.

For this project we worked in what is a new way for us – and one that has proved to be hugely rewarding. Using a small pot of R&D money, we commissioned two brilliant creative agencies (both experienced in creating immersive worlds through technology) to each come up with a prototype experience, or ‘scratch’. This method, which is more commonly used in theatre, doesn’t mean handing over creative control completely. We worked hands on with the agencies – as well as facilitating discussions between them and our expert curatorial and operational teams – to devise something fresh yet firmly grounded in Tower history and logistical possibility

Both agencies came up with fascinating, yet very different prototypes, which we tested on staff and critical friends. We really liked both ‘scratches’, yet in the end decided to go with Anagram, an award-winning digital theatre company to create the full experience. They were inspired by the Tower’s key role in the country’s first state surveillance system under Elizabeth I, and created an immersive audio track to connect us to the story.

Three months later, we launched NIGHTWATCHERS, and tickets sold out within a matter of weeks. Audiences were plunged into a world of Elizabethan spies, yet they needed to navigate this treacherous world using texts and phones calls, slipping between past and present and asking questions about surveillance today, treading the fine line between privacy and security.

Overall, this has been great way for us to develop new and innovative work with relatively low risk and expense.  We were presented with two different creative responses with enough content to be able to explore and evaluate them thoroughly before committing to the full experience. We found it energising to see something ‘live’ so early on in the process, and we were better able to anticipate challenges we were likely to face later on. This definitely won’t be the last time we work from ‘scratch’!

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This summer, we are inviting families to become Time Explorers at Hampton Court Palace and discover amazing stories from the past.

Digital missions are interactive adventures played on a mobile device. Families can choose to either download the free iOS mobile app from the Apple store to any Apple device, or they can borrow a device free of charge during a visit to Hampton Court as part of the admission price.

There’s a choice of Missions to do and in each one, the player meets a character from the palace’s history who is facing a tricky situation and needs their help.

In ‘The Clerk’s Fantastic Feast’, the whole family can work together to save the day by helping the Tudor Kitchens’ harassed Clerk and his depleted staff to prepare an amazing banquet for Henry VIII. Or in ‘The Ambassador’s Secret Assignment’ they can put their spying skills to the test and help the Venetian ambassador to investigate Henry VIII’s Tudor Apartments.

As they play, families solve the characters’ dilemmas by tackling a series of challenges that encourage them to explore the palace, looking for clues and discovering the answers they need. If they complete the mission successfully, families win a badge and a ‘Pastport’ to keep.

Digital Missions have been designed for both families and schools. They have been developed to stimulate a set of core skills: looking, imagining, discovering, investigating, gathering, questioning, comparing, interpreting, solving, sharing, challenging and creating. They are also designed as a social experience, encouraging team work and interaction.

During 2014, 2500 children took part in focus groups to help refine the concept and to test a prototype of the game on iPads and iPods at Hampton Court Palace. This user-led design approach resulted in significant improvements being made to user experience, content and reward structure of the game. The final versions of the Missions were launched in May 2015, and have been enjoyed by hundreds of school children. We’re confident that families are going to really enjoy them too and more Digital Missions are being planned for the future.

The Digital Missions have been developed in partnership with the agency Kingdom and the development is informed through consultation with schools and families from around the UK. For more information about Digital Missions, please contact the Learning team at Historic Royal Palaces and check the web pages on the Historic Royal Palaces website for schools and for families. 

How have you used digital technology to enhance the visitor experience in your museum? Leave a comment below

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TimeQuake, our immersive, interactive family experience that ran over the nine days of the May half term was a great success. Not only have more than 5,000 visitors had a great experience learning about the palace in this one-hour multi-time period mission, but the fissure in the time vortex has been sealed and history has been saved!

TimeQuake is just one example of how our public programming is improving the visitor experience at Hampton Court Palace for families, reflected in Hampton Court making the long list for this year’s Telegraph Family Friendly Museum Award, run by the charity Kids in Museums.

Last year, families told us they were looking for participatory experiences that all the family could enjoy together from pre-school age children to grandparents. TimeQuake was one of the outputs from this feedback.

One family, with children aged four, nine and 12, said:

‘The Time Explorers blew me away. They were enthralling, supportive, so clear and so exciting. They made it so that even my husband, who generally is quite critical of events such as these, become invigorated, actively encouraging our children to hurry along, as to avoid the time vortex!’

The experience began with an immersive film describing the peril Nicholas Kratzer, Henry VIII’s clock-maker, had created by programming a magic dial in the King’s astronomical clock, designed to bring him back from the past after 500 years, to see how things have changed. However his meddling with the fabric of time caused a ‘TimeQuake’ resulting in the course of history being destabilised.  The mission was for our family visitors to complete challenges throughout the palace to restore history and by doing so, save the present.

We selected 50 young people from open auditions, who then received training from the Rose Theatre Kingston to become Time Explorers.  They guided visitors through the time vortex on site-specific missions that combined encounters with costumed characters and audio-visual technology. The script for the experience was created by award-winning author Damian Dibben. TimeQuake proved we could bring together a diverse creative team and host an unforgettable experience for 90 visitors every half an hour.

We hope no permanent damage was done to the time vortex as part of this project, but if we do stumble upon a wormhole to the future amongst the ancient cobblestones, we hope to see you all here for our next family extravaganza!

Did you experience the TimeQuake? Let us know what you thought in the comments below. Or have you put on a similar event within your organisation? We’d love to hear what you learnt.

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Landmark: the 1,000-year-old Tower of London will feature as the backdrop to the evening art classes

Londoners have a unique chance to reclaim one of the city’s oldest landmarks during evening drawing classes at the Tower of London this autumn.

Tower after hours will see everyone from seasoned artists to keen newbies explore the iconic fortress through art.

The classes, which aim to exploit the atmospheric nature of the Tower at twilight, will encourage engagement with the beauty and grandeur of the 1,000-year-old World Heritage Site and its history.

We are calling for expressions of interest from partners to co-produce the workshops, which will take place once the hum of tourists have left.

With the right partner, the classes will become a permanent part of our offer – and a chance for young professionals, who may not have visited our sites, to learn about and engage with the Tower of London.

We previously ran drawing workshops at the Tower in October 2011 and 2012, around the time of the Big Draw, and found people were instantly inspired by the ambient setting.

For more information, see the expression of interest document.

To declare an interest, please email Zinta.jaunitis@hrp.org.uk or call 020 3166 6619.

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Movie Maker Mission is a truly exciting way of bringing history to a wide audience through animation. Throughout this year the Learning & Engagement team at Historic Royal Palaces are recruiting thousands of children and young people to create drawings, music and sound to be transformed into a rip-roaring animated yarn, telling 500 years of history in less than five minutes.

My role as director of the film means I have to research and edit the vast array of stories across the 500 years and choose some of the key moments that have helped to define Hampton Court Palace over five centuries. I am lucky enough to have all sorts of opportunities to discover more about the history and observe the palace and its visitors today. From gong scourers (privy cleaners) to noblemen within the palace walls, there are some fascinating stories to be heard (and told!).

The process for our animation will take several months during this year as every detail on screen is created by the public. Each drawing chosen, from vases to Victorians, hats to Henry VIII himself, will then be painstakingly cut and pasted onto our master storyboard alongside the voices being recorded for the characters and their stories. Once these are established we move through the script to show different periods of time as the stories unfold, adding in background images to support the characters and show a variety of palace locations across time.

Animate: drawings we collected will be pulled apart so they come alive in the movie

For me, the best part of the film’s creative process is seeing the different reactions from the people who come to our workshops as they hear about life in the palace, and watching their ideas and responses come to life in the drawings and sounds they make for the movie. The greatest challenge is to choose and keep key moments in the film while moving through time at great speed, and while making sense of the various changes to palace life. We also like to add some little details you might not spot on first viewing…

The film will launch on October 24 and will be shown at Hampton Court Palace until Sunday 1 November 2015.

For more information on how your family or school can get involved in the project, visit the Movie Maker Mission website.

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Workshops: young actors will receive professional training and learn site-specific theatre

Auditions to be part of Hampton Court Palace’s ‘TimeQuake’ event in May this year have got off to a flying start. The sessions involve lots of hilarious ice breakers and short storytelling exercises – no prep work required – and are designed to give young people aged 16 to 20 an amazing opportunity. The 70 who audition successfully will receive professional theatrical, and historical, training, culminating in them performing at our exciting interactive event at the palace from 23 to 31 May 2015.

We are working with the Rose Theatre Kingston, and specifically alongside the theatre’s Director of Learning & Participation, Ciaran McConville, to provide this exciting offer, which forms the learning programme associated with the ‘TimeQuake’ event.

Under Ciaran’s direction, these young people will receive vocal training from a qualified voice coach and rehearse short scripts at the theatre until they are confident they can lead a group of visitors on an exciting journey through one of the world’s great palaces. The selected ‘Time Explorers’ will gain a comprehensive knowledge of Hampton Court Palace delivered through fun and lively workshops specifically created for this opportunity.

TimeQuake: young actors will perform at the palace alongside professionals

‘TimeQuake’ is not a play so much as immersive, interactive, site-specific theatre. The goal is to bring history to life in an exciting and memorable way. We need charismatic young actors who will appeal to our pre-teen participants and their families. Those selected will have access to hidden parts of the palace, and the incredible opportunity to explore 500 years of stories from Hampton Court. They will also work with some of the country’s top live interpreters – and perform within the palace to thousands of local families. The narrative of this experience has been written by Damian Dibben, author of the best-selling History Keepers series.

There’s still time for you to get involved: contact Ciaran at CiaranM@rosetheatrekingston.org

Auditions are happening throughout February and early March, with the last one on March 12.

See you at the auditions!

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Curious Connections: the past year has seen us trial new formats at our evening talks

We have a well-established tradition of public evening talks at all of our palaces, inviting historians, writers and curators to offer their expert insights into our stories. Over the years we’ve built up a loyal fan base and attracted high-profile names, including author Hilary Mantel on Anne Boleyn’s downfall and art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon chairing a debate on the art masters. But, of course, we never want to rest on our laurels – and as part of our bold new strategy we are working on some key areas to improve and grow our offer.

#1 – developing new formats to attract broader audiences

We love our ‘committed enthusiast’ audience, but, like lots of cultural organisations, we are also concerned with being relevant to a broad range of people and want to diversify our audience to better reflect the population local to our palaces. One way to do this is to broaden our offer.

‘Curious Connections’  is our new talk format at the Tower of London, in which we invite a panel of experts to discuss historic stories that resonate with contemporary issues. One of my favourite talks of last year was ‘Spies and Us’, when HRP curator Sally Dixon-Smith spoke on the spies shot at the Tower during the First World War and expert Richard Aldrich shared his knowledge of modern espionage.

The result was an absorbing dialogue that illuminated current concerns like Wikileaks and GCHQ through the lens of the Tower’s past. Unfamiliarly for us, 40 per cent of that audience had never been to an HRP event before, and one person described it as ‘fascinating, fresh, insightful’.

#2 – focusing resources and increasing impact

We are always juggling our desire to offer a wide a range of activities with our commercial responsibilities to deploy resources effectively. So looking forward, we have decided to reduce the number of talks offered while strengthening each event (carefully curating speakers and topics, marketing effectively, and so on) to make it more successful.

In addition, we will programme more and more talks that are part of ‘something bigger’ – a larger initiative that gives each event more momentum and bite. Recently we had talks to celebrate Hampton Court Palace’s new art gallery, and next up, excitingly, is inspired by the recent BBC TV show with Lucy Worsley on Edward VI’s christening.

Something bigger: Lucy Worsley presents ‘A Night at Hampton Court’ with David Starkey

#3 – using digital activity to amplify our offer

We want as many people as possible to access our stories, but know that for some visiting our sites in person isn’t an option. So, we’re taking the palaces to the people through digital outputs, including podcasts and engaging social media campaigns. Recent listeners to our podcasts have been from as far afield as Panama and Bosnia and Herzegovina, plus we were excited to see 1,500 people take part in our Facebook vote to tell us ‘who is the most glorious Georgian?’ – ahead of our live debate on the same topic. (Queen Caroline, brilliant wife of George II topped the poll, in case you were wondering!)

We are looking forward to making changes and trying new ideas. Over the next year we anticipate some trial, some error and lots of hard work, but think it will be well worth it.

We would love to hear what you think through the comments section below. And of course, we hope you’ll come and enjoy our talks programme at the palaces or visit us online soon.

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Challenge: our Tudors at the Tower Festival saw us battle against the rainy weather

Hard to believe it’s nearly the end of 2014! As the Christmas holidays loom and winter weather takes hold, we’re thinking back to warmer days, reflecting on our first summer of family festivals: Tudors at the Tower, and the Glorious Georgian Family Festivals at Hampton Court, Kensington Palace and Kew Palaces.

Family Festivals are new to Historic Royal Palaces (HRP) and an important part of our new Learning & Engagement strategy. We visualised these festivals as distinctive, large-scale, participatory learning experiences for families, with the aim of attracting new and more diverse visitors to the palaces.  The idea is to do a few big, impactful events rather than lots of smaller ones.

The challenges of a festival…rain

Our first festival was Tudors at the Tower in May.  Doing anything for the first time can be a challenge and this was no exception, how on earth were we going to get portable loos (a family essential!) into the Moat? The Tower is a fortress and access isn’t easy, even these days. To add to the practical challenges, a ceremonial event, Constable’s Dues, was taking place. Oh, and a crane would be in action that weekend, dismantling a huge marquee near the site of our event.

Just when all that was under control, the heavens erupted with  a rain storm of biblical proportions, complete with lightning strikes, as we were erecting Tudor tents and installing the 360°  digital ‘Pop up Palace’. Would we ever be ready in time for our joint launch party with Kids in Museums that evening?  Peter Bazalgette, Chair of the Arts Council, broadcaster and HRP Trustee Trevor McDonald, and historian Bethany Hughes were due to speak in just a few hours, and we were expecting 200 guests. Just in the nick of time, everything came together and the sun broke through, our guests arrived and everyone thoroughly enjoyed the party. The summer of family festivals was well and truly launched.

Launch: Sir Trevor McDonald, a trustee of Historic Royal Palaces

Working with high profile creative and local community partners is another important part of our new strategy, so we were delighted to present our new animated film of Anne Boleyn’s coronation procession, made by children from Shapla primary school in Tower Hamlets with the help of our new partners, Aardman Animations, in the Pop up Palace. Have a look and let us know what you think of the film.

Over the May bank holiday weekend we welcomed about 10,000 visitors to Tudors at the Tower, who enjoyed discovering what life was like in Tudor times.

Glorious Georgians

The  ‘Glorious Georgian Garden Parties’ at Kensington, Hampton Court and Kew Palaces in June, July and August respectively were more genteel affairs, with families invited to immerse themselves in a Georgian world and adopt the etiquette needed to become courtiers. Visitors learnt how to dress and conduct themselves at court, and our more boisterous guests enjoyed sword fighting, duelling and military drill. We wanted to give visitors a real sense of what life was like in Georgian times and feedback was overwhelmingly positive, with one 6-year-old boy telling us it was the best day of his life! For many, the festivals far exceeded their expectations:

“It’s been really, really great. I thought it would just be a few craft tables, or something but this has been great. It’s been amazing.” (A mother at Hampton Court’s Glorious Georges Family Festival).

The Audiences Agency conducted independent evaluation of all our festivals and found 98 per cent of visitors thought the events were good or very good and 79 per cent to the Hampton Court Palace Garden Party said they had learnt something new – so they weren’t just having fun! We want all our family festivals to be more than a great day out, so they all have clearly defined learning outcomes, involve creative and community partners and have learning programmes attached to them.

Glorious: the Georgian events at Hampton Court, Kensington and Kew proved a hit

What’s next?

We are firming up our plans for big family events next year and will be sure to act on all the lessons that we’ve learnt from this year. Tickets have just gone on sale for Tudors on Tour – our first ever off site family festival taking place at Tatton Park over the first May bank holiday. More soon – but in the meantime book early to avoid disappointment!

We would love to hear from you if you’ve organised large-scale family events – any tips we could share? Or anything you would do differently? Thanks!

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Campaign: we used whiteboards to get people involved with the project

In our last blog you read about the Poppies installation and the Why Remember? learning programme we built around it. We also ran a ten-week social media campaign based around three questions, encouraging people to think about how and why we remember the First World War, and how they felt it should be remembered in future.

How did we do it?

The campaign was mainly Twitter-based, but some Facebook posts went out via our charity partners and our core media team. Our aims were to teach people about the war, increase the number of Twitter followers and drive people to our online survey.

We shared pictures, videos – including animations made by schools – and facts about the war, using the hashtag #WhyRemember. We sent out Tweets every day, using Tweetdeck to time our messaging. We uploaded 19 videos which received over 26,000 views.

So, what did we learn?

• We received a healthy amount of engagement, but people preferred to respond to the questions via Facebook, rather than Twitter – probably due to the character limit.
• In hindsight, ten weeks was too long; although there were spikes in popularity around notable dates it was difficult to keep engagement levels up.
• Twitter swallows content! In future we will prepare a larger bank of images and facts to ensure the content of each tweet is visually and editorially rich.
• The overview video was well received – it seems a good idea to have a piece of content that summaries the whole concept. We also ‘pinned’ this to our Twitter profile.
• Working with partners – within Historic Royal Palaces and the six service charities – was an excellent way to access previously unavailable audiences. We will do this again.
• Using a single hashtag on Twitter helped strengthen the campaign as a brand.

Have you started a social media campaign? What worked well? Share your thoughts in the comments below – we’d love to hear from you!

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Royal visit: the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh paid tribute to the fallen in October

The sea of red poppies at the Tower of London has captured the hearts and imaginations of not only the nation, but the whole world. The Tower saw record numbers of visitors come to catch a glimpse of the 888,246 poppies. The installation was visited by members of the Royal family and even the Government stepped in to extend its poignant reign. But what was its deeper meaning? And what did people take away from the spectacle that is so familiar to us now?

Imagine the scene in the years after the First World War. Every family has sacrificed and everyone grieves. In recognition, memorials are erected, the two minute silent tribute is introduced, and poppies become commonplace. No one need ask ‘What is remembrance?’ ‘Who owns it?’ ‘How do we do it?’ Everyone knows the answers to these questions because they’ve witnessed the war and felt its impact.

Answering these questions in 2014 is much more difficult. Not only does a more complex range of histories exist about the war, but living witnesses have passed away and families are less likely to know their own war-related histories as a result. Our general knowledge about the war itself is incomplete. To make the First World War centenary meaningful to our audiences, we need to not only teach them about the war, but also to help them move to a more reflective position in line with the aspirations of the centenary commemoration.

Sea of red: a national schools campaign was launched around the three questions

Why Remember? our learning and engagement programme for Tower of London Remembers, was designed specifically to engage our audiences in a meaningful discussion about First World War remembrance and by so doing, transform their relationship to it. To move audiences to this position we knew that it was much more complex than simply telling stories about the war, so we developed three questions which helped shape content development and ensured audience progression:

• Why should we remember the war?
• Why is 100 years so significant?
• How would you like to remember?

The first question is an invitation to re-connect audiences with local, national or international stories. The second helps audiences explore why the centenary, as the symbolic moment when lived experience passes into documented history, is important in helping to shape our future understanding of the war. The third question acknowledges that remembrance can have both individual and community aspects which can be expressed in many different ways.

Ahead of Armistice Day, hundreds of thousands of schools from the UK, USA and Canada tuned into a remembrance assembly, broadcast live from the Tower of London. The assembly, produced by Discovery Education in partnership with our learning team, explored the three questions and saw local schools, military personnel and poppies artist Paul Cummins take part in what was a momentous part of our centenary commemorations.

For young and old, formal and informal, from self-guided through to deeper intervention and national projects, we have found the three questions are successful way of ensuring that our audiences engage not only with the history of the war itself and to better understand its impact and legacy, but also to create a safe space to communicate and express thoughts and feelings about what remembrance means to them.

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