MPA Staff win University Excellence Award for Hong Kong project

Staff from the School are celebrating after winning a prestigious Coventry University Excellence awards at a glittering ceremony held in Coventry Cathedral.

The project they won for was an augmented-reality prison break experience that was held as part of the SPARK Festival: a British Council celebration of science and creativity held at the Tai Kwun Heritage and Arts Centre in Hong Kong in January of 2019.

The staff from the School worked with staff and students from across the three schools of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at Coventry as well as staff and students from the Hong Kong Design Institute to create a manga-style prison break experience. Building a set from scratch in one of the old prison blocks of the former police station, they created an experience where visitors became immersed in a narrative in which they had to use their phones to help a group of superheroes escape from the clutches of a wicked warlock keeping them prisoner.

The event lasted for three days and, during that time, the experience had nearly six thousand visitors from 18 countries.

Steve Dawkins, one of the organising team said:

“This was a really exciting project to be part of. It required a lot of people to assist in its production and everyone involved worked exceptionally hard to make it happen. It took a lot out of us to complete it but, in the end, it was really worth it. Everyone involved learnt a lot from the experience.”

The project team are now exploringt other opportunities to roll out this project, or a similar AR project. They have already been commissioned to produce an experience for the Hay Literary Festival in 2020 and are in discussions to exhibit at the Dubai Expo in 2020 and at SPARK 2 in January 2021.