In the last two years our schools producer, Steven Roper has been researching the question ‘How can we further animate our collections in engaging ways utilising gaming and popular culture?’

Many of the aims look at increased engagement – adding elements of gaming and popular culture could see a heightened interest in our collections that are more relatable to diverse groups.

Ensure a broader audience reach – using social media and gaming channels to build new relationships with audiences including schools.

Enhanced learning – offering new and innovative ways to educate and inform. Community building – using games to build communities that stay and to explore and shape experiences using art from the Whitworth’s collections.

One exciting software platform – Bloxels, a platform for creating video games without coding, using physical blocks and a companion app has enabled up to test out how we can tell other stories from our historic collections in both playful and meaningful ways.

After one year, I have started to devise pixel based games linking to art works on display at the Whitworth and am trained up on the Bloxels software. In particular, linking to our Turner ‘In Light and Shade’ exhibition to pilot test what a game based off our collections could look like

Connecting to the Turner: In Light and Shade exhibition enabled us to recreate one of Turner’s coastal seascapes and help tell the story of Grace Darling and her daring rescue mission back in 1838. Grace was the daughter of an English lighthouse keeper and in 1838, her participation in the rescue of survivors from the shipwrecked Forfarshire brought her national fame.

On the rescue mission, our hero battles irate seagulls, spiky sea urchins, power hungry crabs and jellyfish… nobody likes jellyfish.

Grace seeks the help of an artist who’s on the beach who refers to himself as ‘The Painter of Light’ We’ll just call him Mr. Turner.

Learning new software and raising my own awareness of new opportunities to develop gaming linking to our collection. Bloxels is a curious resource. It contains themed assets with ready made art, characters and backgrounds to use in your games but with the user friendly feature to build and develop your own. 

We can’t wait to explore other stories from our collections using Bloxels Many thanks to James Macanufo from Pixel Press for his support, guidance and generosity in providing this software as we continue to create games and share other stories from our collections using gaming as a platform for connection. We look forward to sharing more developments going forward – game on!