The project: We were given a few storage containers in the Old Laundry Yard, Shepherd’s Bush Market, in which to design an immersive experience for the Arts Festival. Wanting to focus on the market itself, we interviewed various market sellers and collected various objects that interested us. We particularly wanted to draw attention to the contemporary struggles faced by the market: corporate owners, gentrification, customers lost to Westfield.

We built a VR experience around the objects and Maaike and I crafted a narrative that would bring the idea to life and create a coherent end-to-end experience. This involved creating characters and a script for the performers, a fake market stall (the “emporium”) of our objects and an audio story that used the ethnographic interviews to sit inside the VR experience. We were inspired by the magical worlds of children’s literature.

My role: Writer & Director of a live immersive project (with Maaike Klein) at the Hammersmith & Fulham Arts Festival 2019 with the RCA.