About us
The Museums in the Metaverse (MiM) project will create a ground-breaking two-sided Extended Reality (XR) Cultural Heritage platform that aims to empower diverse visitors to explore cultural assets in new and engaging ways; enable cultural heritage professionals and non-specialist users to create new content; and explore models of use to support sustainable economic and cultural growth.
The project - funded by the UK Government's Innovation Accelerator programme, led by Innovate UK Research and Innovation - harnesses Glasgow University’s global reputation for research in digital cultural heritage and XR to develop an innovative solution to the physical and geographical constraints that currently limit heritage institutions to display less than 10% of their holdings, thereby limiting audience reach by cost, distance, and accessibility.
One side of the proposed platform is for visitors to gain access to a rich array of museums, sites, objects, and novel and dynamic experiences. The other is for virtual curators, where experts and beginners alike can build enriching and entertaining narratives using objects and virtual environments that have never before been placed together in the real world.
Partners are leading immersive learning platform Edify, Historic Environment Scotland, National Museums Scotland, and The Hunterian.
This project is funded by the Glasgow City Region Innovation Accelerator programme. Led by Innovate UK on behalf of UK Research and Innovation, the pilot Innovation Accelerator programme is investing £100m in 26 transformative R&D projects to accelerate the growth of three high-potential innovation clusters – Glasgow City Region, Greater Manchester and West Midlands. Supporting the UK Government’s levelling-up agenda, this is a new model of R&D decision making that empowers local leaders to harness innovation in support of regional economic growth and help attract private R&D investment and develop future technologies.
