Escape Room in a Box and Digital Humanities by Stephanie Barter

Blog Post – An Escape Room in a Box

Last November, I began a Digital Humanities internship, investigating the possible uses of their Museum in a Box (MiaB) which had been previously rarely used. The project involved the Museum in a Box – an acrylic box designed to play audio clips when a programmed NFC is placed on it. This prompted a possibility of making an interactive game where the board and the character counters could speak to players, or a collection of oral testimonies linked to tangible objects, inspired by the Hunt Museum’s ‘Seeing without Sight’ exhibition. I began by investigating its capacities, aided by an existing pack of RFID-armed Southampton postcards – and was greeted by an (incredibly spooky) whispered start-up sound. Such was the beginning of our partnership.

I was drawn to the possibilities of using the MiaB as a component of a wider activity, rather than an activity in itself. While the existing postcards played a spoken testimony of Holyrood Church when placed on the box, I wondered if the monotonous motion would put users off engaging with all the items. I wanted people to interact with the box on their way to something else – an enhancement of an activity rather than the activity itself. This interactivity led to a variety of project proposals, particularly those with multiple components that came together to achieve a final goal. Some of my early proposals involved a game board with interchangeable tiles (some of which had an audio-embedded RFID tag to trigger an action or development to a story) based around the ‘escape’ of artefacts from the British Museum, or a pop-up book with collectable elements which come together to form the Dickin Medal for Animal Bravery, and tell a multi-part story of the homing pigeons of WWII.

Early designs for incorporating the Museum in a Box (MiaB)

This multi-part idea developed into a multi-part puzzle, and evolved further into the idea of a portable escape room. This escape room would incorporate a collection of varied perspectives, all centred around a contested artefact, and allowing for healthy debate. I then worked to create information packs including five themes: Voices of the Culture (considering the perspective of people in the country of origin of the artefact), Stance of the British Museum (through Trustees Statements and the artefact’s presentation in the Museum gift shop, for example), Location for the Artefact to be Released to (particularly if a museum or area has been chosen for the anticipated return of the artefact), Public Opinion (through polls and newspaper coverage of protests), and Scholarly Views. The original aim was to have five ‘sets’ of these, each with differing perspectives, and for these five sets to be taken into secondary classrooms. Students would then work in groups of five to six to ‘earn’ these information cards through an escape room, building teamwork and problem-solving skills, and come to a conclusion based on the cards gathered – one from each theme. These card groups were curated to contain a range of perspectives, aiming to display to students how different information sources and formats could influence their own thoughts on a topic, despite being from the same theme. By the end of my internship, two sets were produced (with the information gathered for the full five sets), and one escape room framework was made.

An early diagram showing the splitting of an artefact into five parts, and suggestions for information groups

I had originally hoped to incorporate one RFID tag per set, each under a differing theme, so each group could independently interact with the box. However, the MiaB was limited in its capacity, despite only having one specialised use – to play a recorded audio file when the RFID was placed on the box. Despite my very best intentions (and a great many uncomfortable attempts at recording myself reading academic papers aloud), the less-than-trusty MiaB refused to play the files when tested. In order to continue the project, I had to abandon the very name of the internship. However, all was not un-digitalised. As a reward for the acquisition of information, I included a small 3D printed model of the Parthenon sculpture broken down into parts. These parts came together, upon completion of the escape room, to re-form the Parthenon sculpture.

The splitting of the Parthenon sculpture into 3D printable parts

I designed the escape room to be versatile, so that the clues and playthrough were not permanently linked to the Parthenon Sculptures. To do this, I designed it in two parts – the escape room, containing all the clues, and six ‘discovery boxes’ containing the information packs that the clues opened. This allows the information within to be changed and for the escape room to be used for other projects, and, hopefully, other fun 3D-printed sculptures. I also ensured that the clues did not require any existing knowledge, especially of the Parthenon. After a rigorous playtest with the Digital Humanities team, I also brought it home to my friends: two languages students, an education student, a computing student and one of my fellow history coursemates, who all did a fabulous job at completing it.

All clues from the MiaB escape room, handmade from wood, reclaimed plastic and fabric

An example of the inside of a Discovery Box, containing an information postcard, Parthenon pieces, and a key to progress the main escape room structure

The final products: an introduction pack (including a user guide, master key and code set, and the first clue), the Discovery Boxes (left) and the escape room framework (right)

I have learnt a great deal from this internship, from time management (and not getting too sucked into endless post-it notes and flowcharts that would rival any detective novel) to communicating my ideas through sketches, diagrams and written explanations. While the internship was intended to be one semester, this project grew to take both semesters. I am pleased with and proud of the final outcome, and I hope that it will be useful to the department (perhaps to be incorporated into a seminar or outreach efforts) or to a student who can take the framework and make a new escape room with it on a topic close to their own heart.