In 2018, Cherry Barber-Mansell founded The White Tent Company. It’s an immersive events company that specialises in murder mystery events that merge multimedia technologies with traditional performance techniques.
Picture the (fictional) murder scene that Cherry sets: you, as a detective for the day, search a site of crime for evidence with the assistance of your smartphone or iPad. As you scour the room, you find QR codes that - when scanned - reveal clues. They could be DNA results, CCTV footage, transcripts from an interview or some other nugget of information. To gather further evidence, suspects (played by character actors) are dotted around for you to interact with or interrogate. Through asking questions and gathering evidence via technology, you might just solve the whodunit.
“We’d already blended technology with performance, so to push us further we applied to Clwstwr for seed funding,” says Cherry. “We wanted to look into developing an app for people to use at our events, something that would use virtual or augmented reality to add an additional layer to a scene. Our audiences love getting stuck in, so we thought that adding another layer of immersion would enhance their experience. We didn't know what that app might look like or what technology we’d need, so R&D seemed like a good idea.”
Cherry had planned to kick things off with a research trip to a week-long gaming festival in London, one where companies showcase new technologies, app developers mingle and gaming companies come out to play. But, one week after starting her Clwstwr project, the pandemic stopped everything, including the gaming festival and Cherry’s performances.
“What we ended up doing was different, but still very useful,” says Cherry. “We ramped up our research efforts and networking via online means, including Zoom meetings, email chats and desk research, and grew our industry awareness.
“Our Clwstwr mentors gave us a lot of help with contacts so we could form connections within the app-making industry. They also gave us feedback on our ideas and pushed us in the right direction. At one point, we considered stopping because the pandemic was halting everything, but they encouraged us to keep pushing because you never know what's going to happen a few months down the line. It felt like a combination of moral support, business support, and someone keeping us accountable – and that was really nice.”
After exploring technologies, Cherry and her team decided against virtual reality: “We really like the idea of having a fully rounded experience with lots of people, so VR, which is very much about one person, wouldn't work for the app. We honed our focus on augmented reality and spoke to graphic designers, coders and app developers.”
To put everything she’d learned into one defined outcome, Cherry made a prototype for her app: “I thought a prototype would cost a lot to produce and maintain; when a Clwstwr partner told us that a prototype can be as simple as a PowerPoint presentation, I couldn't believe it!
“To make the prototype, we had someone going around a room through the camera. Then, we used similar tagging technology to what Snapchat uses to put our logo in places around the room where you could find clues. This resulted in a short video showing how it would look. We also did a storyboard showing how to use the app, including stages on downloading the app, logging in and submitting answers.”
Because of the impact that the pandemic has had on the live events industry, Cherry is going to wait before taking the app any further. “I’m really happy with where we got to, especially given how we had to change our initial plans for our Clwstwr project,” she says. “When the time is right, we will apply for more funding to dig further into augmented reality and create an app. I really want to continue, but as it will cost around £40,000, I need to wait until we’re firmly back on our feet with performances and our finances.”