Client – Weald and Downland Living Museum
Partners – University of Kent/SOAS/University of Birmingham/King’s College London/Shakespeare Birthplace Trust
Funding – Arts and Humanities Research Council
CGI – Grant Cox (ArtasMedia)
Game Design – Stuart Graham
Software – 3DS Max/Substance Painter/Unreal Engine/CloudTour
Welcome to the Middling Culture exhibition, where we highlight the lives of England’s sixteenth and seventeenth century middle class. Through curated images and artifacts, we explore their daily realities-neither wealthy nor impoverished, but socially significant.
Our exhibition is organized into thematic sections, showcasing objects that define the middling class and its communities. These items illustrate their social mobility and distinct identity amidst broader society, revealing their role in shaping England’s cultural landscape.
In 2023 using Unreal Engine 5, we created a state-of-the-art, meticulously reconstructed ‘virtual’ parlour, designed as an interactive game. It is typical of the kind of space that would have been familiar to middling individuals (such as Shakespeare). Through it, we can learn about the sorts of objects and activities that shaped the experiences, imagination and creativity of people from the middling ranks of society. Alongside our immersive game, we also created a bespoke web tour accompanyment,within a website showcasing an online object driven exhibition.
Download the game for yourself, or explore the collection here.
