The challenge

Each year 20,000 young people are able to hear from holocaust survivors directly at the National Holocaust Centre in Nottingham. However, as time passes and fewer survivors remain, direct interaction will cease to be possible.

Our intervention

The Digital R&D Fund for the Arts, a partnership between Arts Council England, Nesta and the Arts & Humanities Research Council, funded an innovative idea to preserve the testimony of these survivors for future audiences. 3D filming and Natural Language Processing (where computers can understand human speech as it is spoken) enabled school children to interact meaningfully with the survivors.

The result

So far, ten survivors have been filmed, resulting in over 200 hours of footage, with the testimony on display at the museum. Supported further by the Digital Arts and Culture Accelerator (a partnership between Nesta and Arts Council England), The National Holocaust Centre has set up a trading subsidiary to spread the use of 3D filming and Natural Language Processing to other heritage settings - potentially creating a new revenue stream.