Russia’s last emperor, Nicholas II, and his family left behind a legacy of thousands of private photographs. Giving these photographs a second, digital, life we created #Romanovs100, a kind of history simulator running on social networks to let history unfold on users’ devices. The project culminates in an AR photo album where the images are mixed with extended reality.

This allows us place our project within edutainment, where history is liberated from textbooks. With this project, we strive to demonstrate how educational projects can resonate with new generations fully-adapted to gadgets and inspire them to learn.

The Romanovs were photography pioneers — in the early 20th century they owned the world's first portable cameras capturing almost every meaningful event in their lives.

On July 17, 1918, the last Tsar of the Russian Empire, Nicholas Romanov, was executed with his wife and five children by the Bolsheviks. To pay tribute to the family, we merged a large set of visual data with transmedia storytelling to piece out the big picture of a "lost Russia". Thousands of Romanovs images converted into platform-specific social media narratives on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram with accounts on each network showcasing unique format and content.

Objectives:

- create an immersive educational project that can resonate with “new generations” fully-adapted to social media

- transform content to an interactive AR book which makes learning experiences an emotional journey into history

- introduce new approaches which can be effectively used in history education courses

Our purpose was not to write yet another history book, but to create something personal and concurrent, connecting two totally different eras through content and creativity. Secondly we wanted to bring in the element of entertainment and surprise to help gain and retain the attention of young audiences.

That is why the #Romanovs100 AR photo-album was set to combine the emotional language of photography with avant-garde tech. This would create an interactive history book featuring the humane story and unique photographic legacy of Russia’s last tsar, Nicholas II. While the extended reality would break the ‘fourth wall’ of storytelling providing for side-narratives, archive video, 3D visualisations and more.

#Romanovs100 is an image-first digital storytelling project built on analysis of thousands of photos taken by Russia’s last Royal family. To make history come to life in the world of digital platforms, we partnered with the Russian State Archive to retrieve 4,000 actual analogue images once stored in private albums.

This vast family chronicle is a detailed first-hand witness account of the early 20th century - for decades this part of Russian history was eradicated from school-books and kept in the dark during Soviet rule. Adapting our historical research to social media platforms allowed us to make history easily accessible to younger audiences.

#Romanovs100 culminated in an AR photo album: through mixing AR with actual photos, the book breaks traditional print format boundaries to create a new kind of history text that is informative, engaging and interactive, designed to educate and inspire future self-learners.

The purpose of AR is to extend the storytelling through limitations implied by print, and to allow readers become active co-creators of the unfolding story. The app provides an immersive journey into history triggering three interaction types:

- informative (videos, galleries, maps): uses extended reality to tell additional stories through swipeable galleries, AR infographic, short video documentaries rolling inside photos

- visual (panoramas, now/then AR images): AR app allows zoom-in on high-resolution images to experience them from different angles

- emotional (love letters, colorizations, VR animation art): 3D animations which come to life on the book pages offering a fresh emotional connection to the Romanov family. It creates a learning experience through artistic and playful adventure.

#Romanovs100 aims to show that learning history can be compelling and interactive. It targets younger audiences with innovative formats and digital approaches in educational storytelling.

#Romanovs100 was selected to showcase at one of the world’s biggest educational festivals - SXSW EDU 2019 in Austin, Texas where we exclusively presented the AR book. The response from educators and students was overwhelming and we delivered book copies to public libraries, to universities of Texas, Phoenix, New York, Cornell and many other educational secondary institutions who showed interest.

In general, #Romanovs100 had a remarkable impact across social media. The project generated over 25 million impressions & gathered around 55,000 fans & followers combined. Social media posts generated over 1 million engagements.

The project received global media coverage, featuring in The History Extra magazine, BBC News Hour, Tatler, Sky News, Daily Mail, and more.