The Unfiltered History Tour
Empowering citizens with information, engagement, and participation tools to shape the future, fostering a democratic society driven by informed decisions and active citizenship.
The Unfiltered History Tour
Unfiltering Colonial Narratives Through Augmented Reality
The Unfiltered History Tour
Unfiltering Colonial Narratives Through Augmented Reality
Global Recognition
A Cultural Reckoning Recognised Worldwide
TOTAL
The Challenge
Rewriting History Inside the British Museum
The British Museum houses over 8 million artefacts — many obtained during the colonial era. Yet young audiences had only heard the imperialist version of how they arrived there.
VICE World News sought to confront this imbalance and engage a younger generation in meaningful dialogue around colonialism — beyond headlines and social media hot takes.
An equitable understanding of history can only exist when marginalised voices are heard.
The Museum's First Unofficial AR Tour
The Museum's First Unofficial AR Tour
The Unfiltered History Tour transformed Instagram AR filters into a vehicle for historical truth.
Instead of face filters, visitors scanned life-sized artefacts inside the British Museum.
Advanced object recognition identified artefacts in changing lighting conditions. Contextual Augmented Reality overlays reconstructed scenes of colonial crime — narrated by native experts from the countries the artefacts were taken from.
For the first time, AR was used to reframe history from the perspective of the colonised.
Strategy
Changing How We Engage With the Past
Data Selection
Artefacts with imperialist narratives were identified in consultation with historians.
Approach
Instagram filters activated through geolocation allowed native experts to bypass institutional storytelling and speak directly to young Britons.
Call to Action
Visitors were invited to “Unfilter” the British Museum.
Execution & Technology
Engineering the Impossible Inside a Museum
Developed over 18 months by a 100-person team across 10 timezones.
A local London team used LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) to capture high-fidelity 3D data of artefacts.
The AR system dynamically adapted to real-time weather and changing lighting conditions inside the museum — blending satellite data with Instagram’s AR platform in a first-of-its-kind deployment.
This ensured stable recognition and immersive storytelling within a complex indoor environment.
Results & Impact
