_Museum of Austerity

Museum of Austerity is a mixed reality exhibition that preserves memories of public and private events from the Austerity Era. The Austerity Era refers to a decade-long campaign of British government budget-cutting that began in the UK in 2010.

Experienced through Microsoft’s HoloLens 2 headset, Museum of Austerity combines verbal testimony, original music, and volumetric capture inviting audiences to contemplate close-up what happens when state safety nets fail.

This powerful installation combines the skills of theatre/XR director Sacha Wares with the in-depth knowledge of John Pring, editor of Disability News Service. Museum of Austerity offers a comprehensive range of accessibility options including captions, audio description and optional removal of sensitive content. Audiences walk around a gallery space populated with holographic figures representing people whose deaths are associated with changes to the UK benefit system. As they approach a figure, they hear testimony about that person’s life and death from a bereaved relative. As the audience moves away from the figure, they hear archive footage of politicians defending Austerity measures.