The National Archives – Treason Exhibition

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The exhibition was designed around a very striking 3 piece projection which can be glimpsed from outside the gallery and is intended to draw visitors in. Once there the three co-ordinated projections immerse visitors in the concept of treason, it’s changing role in UK history and the high stakes for anyone accused.

Treason Projector

The National Archives is home to millions of historical documents dating back more than 1000 years – created and collected by the UK central government departments and major courts of law. They’re not only responsible for storing some of the most iconic documents in UK history, but also making them available to the public.

The National Archives boasts an ever changing dedicated exhibition space, with their latest exhibition – ‘Treason: People, Power & Plot’ – taking a look at England’s history of treason and the involvement of figures such as Guy Fawkes, Anne Boleyn and Charles I.

The central projections surround the case containing the original Treason Act of 1352 which provided the first legal definitions and qualifications for treason, protecting both the king and his subjects.

Expanding outwards from there, The National Archives used a combination of a/v elements to help visitors connect to the stories of the various traitors the exhibition explores.

Using our Heavy Duty Handsets visitors listen to the traitors own words as performed by actors, taken from the incredible documents on display.

Elsewhere they used short-throw projectors to enable portraits of the traitors to emerge from the walls in particles of light, which would then swirl and transform into a quotation that illustrated their character.

National Archives (with some help from us) continue to put together impressive visitor experiences, bringing incredible archives to life and immersing visitors in the known and unknown history of the UK.

(Exhibition photography by Luke Hayes).