The good, the bad and the ugly

The aim of the project

Colonial histories and their contemporary impacts remain underrepresented, misrepresented, or approached insensitively in media and cultural production. As a result, many stories and perspectives remain unheard, even though these histories are an important part of our shared cultural heritage.

Virtual Reality (VR) offers a powerful new medium for engaging broad audiences with these histories — through presence, embodiment, and emotional depth that conventional formats cannot achieve. Yet VR also carries serious ethical risks: experiences can slip into voyeurism, retraumatisation, or place audiences in positions of unintended complicity. 

This project investigates how writers can responsibly create cinematic VR stories about colonial histories. It focuses on a stage of VR production that is rarely examined: the decisions made by writers before a single scene is built. Through a series of collaborative workshops, writers, heritage institutions, VR producers, and researchers work together to develop practical tools and knowledge for responsible VR storytelling.

How does Inholland approach this project?  

Inholland’s research team, consisting of Pawan Bhansing and Shant Bayramian, co-designs the workshop series together with consortium partners and leads the research and analysis.

Each of the seven sessions focuses on a specific theme, such as VR storytelling, working with archival materials, and the societal impact of immersive media. Throughout the workshop series, participating writers develop their own VR story concept related to colonial history, continuously applying new insights to their creative work. By the end of the project, each writer will have developed a short VR story or scene that explores the unique possibilities of the medium.

The project culminates in a publicly accessible writer’s tool: a practical guide with storytelling principles, ethical guidelines, and practical methods for developing responsible VR content about colonial histories and their ongoing impact. Inholland leads the development of this tool, embeds the findings in its education and research programmes, and shares the results through presentations and workshops.

Added value for education

This project sits directly at the intersection of creative education and emerging technology — two areas that Inholland is actively developing. By bringing creatives into contact with VR production and decolonial theory, the project expands both the technical and ethical horizons of creative education with a focus on tech for change. 

The workshop series doubles as a pedagogical laboratory, for example for the Inholland Emerging Tech Minor. The insights into how writers work with an unfamiliar medium, deal with ethical dilemmas, and transform archival material into immersive stories can be directly applied in education.

We will embed the findings in Inholland's existing and future curricula — particularly in creative writing, media production, and design programmes — equipping students with frameworks for working responsibly in immersive media. 

The project also strengthens the profile of practice-based research (praktijkgericht onderzoek) at Inholland, demonstrating how research and education can be meaningfully intertwined. Participating writers connect real-world creative challenges with insights from postcolonial studies, embodied cognition, and social identity theory — demonstrating the kind of reflective creative practice that Inholland aims to cultivate in its students. 

Finally, the resulting tool provides a resource that educators across the Netherlands — not only at Inholland — can use to introduce responsible immersive storytelling into their programmes. 

Involving the work field

The professional field is not an afterthought in this project — it is central to how the research is designed and carried out. The consortium brings together five professional partners from the creative, heritage, and technology sectors.

Stichting SKLNE (Rotterdam Writers’ Rooms) contributes expertise in writer development, narrative production, and community engagement. SKLNE leads the outreach and selection of writer participants and co-facilitates the workshop sessions. Studio Biarritz is a pioneering VR and new-media production house with international recognition, including work showcased at Venice Immersive, IDFA, and SXSW. They contribute knowledge of professional immersive production pipelines and co-lead sessions on the technical and narrative realities of VR. Stichting West contributes expertise in postcolonial and feminist theory, as well as curatorial practice, providing the critical cultural framework for the project’s sessions and embedding research findings in public programming. Koninklijke Bibliotheek and Nationaal Archief contribute heritage expertise, curated archival access, and knowledge of responsible public engagement with colonial collections. 

The intended impact for the field is threefold: equipping a new generation of writers to enter VR production; strengthening cross-sector connections between the creative, heritage, and technology sectors; and producing a publicly accessible tool that the broader XR ecosystem can adopt and build on.

The expected outcomes

The project produces three interconnected outputs. First, a writer’s tool: a publicly accessible guide offering narrative principles, ethical guidelines, and practical strategies for developing VR content about colonial histories and other socially sensitive topics. The tool is intended for writers, writing rooms, XR producers, heritage institutions, and educators, and will be disseminated through professional networks, conferences, and Inholland’s educational platforms.

Second, VR story treatments or scripts — developed by the participating writers across the workshop series. These serve both as creative outputs and as research data: they are analysed to identify the dilemmas, strategies, and ethical decisions that emerge during the writing process, contributing to the project’s knowledge base. 

Third, a closing public event — in which the toolkit and the writers’ work are formally presented to partners, participants, and the wider field, creating a moment for public reflection on the themes. 

In addition, the project aims to produce at least one scholarly publication and one or more presentations at relevant professional and academic conferences, ensuring that the insights generated reach both the research community and the broader cultural sector. 

Together, these outputs aim to strengthen the immersive experience (IX) ecosystem in the Netherlands. They do so by expanding the pool of writers capable of producing responsible immersive content, providing shared frameworks for ethical narrative development, and deepening understanding of how VR storytelling can make complex, sensitive, and often underrepresented histories more accessible and meaningful for broader audiences.