The Watertower: Gaming for Heritage

In September 2009 the Visualisation Research Unit at the School of Art, Birmingham City University were approached by the Selly Oak Hospital Trust with a view to developing a project for the decommissioning of the Hospital and the subsequent move to the new Queen Elizabeth II facility. Selly Oak was no ordinary hospital: commissioned during the Second World War, it had continued to treat war veterans up until its closure in June 2010, and had recently been unfairly lambasted in the media for mythical shortcomings in its treatment of veterans from Afghanistan. The decommissioning of the Hospital was certain to be a sensitive moment, a long history of innovative practice, especially in transplantation surgery and military medicine, a much loved building that had outlived its usefulness and a fragile media environment required a project that would be both sensitive and celebratory.
The Project Team set about the task by collecting an oral history from patients and staff across generations, and combining these in a 3D environment driven by a games engine and drawn from the architectural history of the Hospital’s famous Watertower. To realise the project, the Team knew that it would have to get a reluctant management to takes some risks, to engage with the contentious and to use the project as a route to the change management processes identified in the early data collection processes. This chapter will discuss the difficulties, processes and techniques used to create a memorable experience of collective memory.