Education technology is dazzling and, when I visited Bett 2024, it was refreshing to see the projects and possibilities on offer, all very different to what we do as a charity creating immersive learning experiences for schools. However, as with us, they were united in the mission to support schools to provide the very best educational experiences.

Immersive learning has its roots in immersive theatre which invites the audience to move through a theatrical world as active participants. In stepping through a door to another world, the audience can feel anything from awe to excitement, and even mild peril. This is mirrored in Punchdrunk Enrichment’s approach to immersive learning however, because it’s about learning rather than entertainment, the experience is more purposeful for the individual.

Many of our immersive learning experiences involve a lot of physical objects. In The Lost Lending Library a library magically arrives in a primary school classroom with the door replaced with a bookcase. Just recently, Route 158 has seen a double decker bus arrive in school playgrounds in Greenwich from another world.

However, using technology to create extraordinary worlds for children to experience is not completely new to us. Our award winning collaboration with Google Creative Labs to produce The Oracles, a  cross platform immersive gaming experience for children, helped us to bridge the digital and the real world. Inspired by the myth of The Twelve Labours of Hercules, the project was designed to engage Key Stage 2 pupils with Greek mythology and mathematics and to improve digital literacies.

The Oracles happened in a game world and an immersive space, which schools had to physically visit. In common with The Lost Lending Library and Route 158, these impactful projects all rely on a physical space and this places a constraint on the number of children who are able to access them.

More than 10 years’ work with schools shows us that immersive learning positively impacts children’s learning and their wider development. Immersive learning calls on children to help with a critical task which they need to do for there to be a successful outcome. Teachers tell us that this changes how children see themselves and how they value their own expertise. 

Another positive feature of immersive learning is that it encourages more children to participate. Children who never normally interact in a class will corroborate each other’s stories to a teacher, and talk enthusiastically about their experiences. Children are enthusiastic to learn, and will often do much more work for their ‘task’ than they have actually been set.

We have been keen to look at how we can ‘package’ immersive learning in a way that allows many more schools to benefit from the experience. The digital realm enables us to do this and we can conjure up new worlds, new stories and new experiences that are far more accessible. At the same time, it is boundless and can be as large, or as small, as we wish. Our challenge is always to make pupils’ engagement purposeful and active.

Visiting Bett was well timed, it was during a period of development for our first fully digital teacher-led project. The immersive experience introduces children to a journalist from another world that seems to be linked in some way to their class. The journalist is desperate to land a front page story and needs their help. An online portal allows the children to communicate with the journalist and AI enables their story ideas to ‘miraculously’ appear in the journalist’s world. Our time at Bett undoubtedly inspired this project and expanded our horizons to the potential of working with EdTech.

Digital has opened up a new creative space for our work and means that we can offer immersive learning to many more schools and, most importantly, at a low cost. However, the principles of our work remain the same. Immersive learning happens directly to the learner. They are protagonists and their feelings are as much part of the story as the characters they encounter. They have a specific role and are uniquely placed to help, for instance because the story can sense their high levels of imagination.

Learners still propel the story forward with the learning tasks they are asked to undertake - they are the experts. Whether they need to write stories, draw book covers, or research their local area, their ‘work’ is part of the unfolding story and it can’t come to a conclusion without their active involvement.

My visit to Bett strengthened my view that education technology can play an important part in our work. We are interested in working with edtech companies who want to create tools to support storytelling in immersive learning projects. Our ambition is to bring our transformative projects, and practice, to more children and schools, and to ignite more imaginations.

Peter Higgin is Artistic Director and Joint CEO of Punchdrunk Enrichment. For more information visit: https://www.punchdrunkenrichment.org.uk/projects/schools