Creating Engagement Through Immersive Heritage Experiences
Heritage can tell some of the most compelling stories - but creating a meaningful connection with visitors often means finding new ways to bring those stories to life. Across projects at Bodmin Jail, the Fram Museum, 878 AD in Winchester and Odyssey in Malta, we've explored how experience design can help visitors engage with heritage through people, places and personal stories, rather than simply presenting facts and objects. Whether through immersive environments, projection, sound, interactive media or performance, the aim is to create a stronger sense of connection - helping visitors understand not just what happened, but what it might have felt like to be there. Because engaging with heritage isn't simply about learning about the past. It's about finding a reason to connect with it.
Creating Engagement Through Heritage
Heritage attractions have an advantage that many new visitor experiences can only try to recreate: they have a genuine story, a sense of place and, often, objects and buildings with a direct connection to the past.
The challenge is how to help today's visitors connect with that heritage.
How can a historic building become more than something to look at? How can a ship, artefact or archaeological collection communicate the experiences of the people connected to it? And how can technology add to authenticity rather than distract from it?
Across projects ranging from historic prisons and polar exploration to Anglo-Saxon Winchester and Malta's layered history, Sarner has explored different answers to these questions.
Making heritage feel relevant
A successful heritage experience doesn't necessarily mean recreating the past exactly as it was.
It means finding ways for visitors to understand it.
At Bodmin Jail, the original 18th-century prison remains at the heart of the experience. Rather than treating the historic building as a backdrop, the visitor journey uses its original corridors, cells and architecture to tell the stories of the people who lived, worked and were imprisoned there.
The Dark Walk provides an introduction to Cornwall's social history before visitors enter the original Naval Wing, where immersive interpretation explores the harsh realities of prison life. Scenic environments, projection, sound, scent and atmospheric effects are used selectively to build context around the authentic spaces.
The result is a useful reminder that technology doesn't have to replace heritage. Sometimes its role is simply to help visitors see it differently.
Giving objects a voice
Historic objects can be powerful, but their meaning isn't always immediately apparent to a modern audience.
At the Fram Museum in Oslo, the ships themselves remain the focus. The Fram and Gjøa are extraordinary artefacts in their own right, but Sarner's upgrades were designed to provide greater context around the people, conditions and experiences behind their expeditions.
Visitors can step aboard Fram while a large-scale projection recreates Arctic conditions around the vessel. Movement, sound and environmental effects create a sense of being at sea and eventually trapped in pack ice. Elsewhere, interactives and multimedia interpretation explore the crew, their journeys and the challenges of polar exploration.
Importantly, the technology doesn't compete with the ship. It helps explain why the ship matters.
The approach contributed to a significant increase in visitor numbers, with the museum reporting that attendance doubled following the upgrades. The project also received a TEA Thea Award for Outstanding Achievement.
Bringing people into the story
History can sometimes feel distant when it is presented only through dates, names and objects.
One way to overcome that distance is to focus on people.
878 AD in Winchester takes visitors back to a pivotal moment in Anglo-Saxon history: the year King Alfred faced the invading Viking army. But the experience deliberately looks beyond the battlefield.
Visitors encounter the people of Winchester through live performance, immersive audiovisual environments and authentic Anglo-Saxon objects. The narrative explores everyday life, trade, conflict and the experiences of people from different backgrounds.
The use of assets from Assassin's Creed Valhalla and its Discovery Tour also introduced a different audience to the city's heritage. Visitor evaluation found that 25% of the 878 AD audience were aged 16-35, compared with 7% at other Hampshire Cultural Trust museums.
Here, digital technology wasn't simply used to make history look impressive. It provided a familiar visual language through which new audiences could begin exploring it.
Connecting layers of history
Some heritage stories are particularly complex because they span centuries.
This is the case for Odyssey in Malta, which brings together the country's prehistoric, military, wartime and contemporary history within a single visitor journey.
The experience begins in Neolithic Malta before moving through periods of conflict and the history of Mercury House itself, including its role as a WWII communications hub. Immersive projections, sound, lighting and physical effects help create distinct environments while keeping the wider story connected.
The final flying theatre experience then brings those different strands together, taking visitors through Malta's landscapes and history while demonstrating how the past has shaped the present.
The approach demonstrates that heritage doesn't have to be presented as a linear timeline. Different periods can be connected through a carefully constructed visitor journey.
Technology should serve the story
Across these projects, the technologies are very different: projection, interactive media, augmented reality, live performance, physical effects, sound and environmental simulation.
But the underlying principle is consistent.
Technology works best when visitors barely notice the technology itself.
The objective isn't to make heritage more technological.
It is to make it more understandable, accessible and engaging.
Preserving authenticity while creating something new
There is an important balance to be maintained when working with heritage.
Visitors should still feel that they are encountering something real - an original building, an historic ship, an artefact or a genuine place.
Experience design can provide the context around those things without diminishing their authenticity.
That's perhaps the most valuable lesson from these projects. The strongest heritage experiences don't attempt to compete with the past. They use contemporary storytelling and design to create a bridge between the visitor and the history.
Because the goal isn't simply to preserve heritage.
It is to help people experience why it matters.
