MSL Digital

Photo: Craig Penfold

MSL Digital operating in the heart of Hastings

Established in 2014 to exploit the potential for AR, VR, 360 and immersive technology, our focus is placemaking and integrating heritage with social, learning and economic objectives.

As a specialist digital heritage agency our raison d’être is to make work using sustainable digital methods; planning and executing heritage projects using the simplest, most sustainable, digital platforms.

We create performances, workshops, exhibitions, and installations that celebrate heritage, community and place and offer opportunities for learning and digital skills through workshops centred on digital skills development.

MSL Digital seeks to bring digital solutions to heritage narratives to provide a more immersive, inclusive experience. We deliver experiential learning and cultural experiences using digital technology. This translates into locally-focused projects and programmes that over time have drawn in a diverse range of participants – whether young, older, skilled or beginners and creatives.

With Piano in 2017, we pioneered the use of live-streaming of the competition and when this previewed at Source Park, we mounted an audience evaluation and schools programme by way of audience development. With our work on the Alley on Claremont, This is for Everyone and the Trinity Triangle Heritage Action Zone we created a digital evaluation toolkit that enabled us to successfully monitor audience data.

In 2023, as part of our Tressell’s Children project we created an immersive exhibition and VR experience and two digital museums using photogrammetry techniques to document the projects we did with communities in Hastings and Chatham, Kent. 

Almost all our projects have a built-in skills development strand. Hastings’ Creative Spring and Hastings’ Creative Summer targeted young people, and Our Past, Our Future, older people who were wanting to develop digital skills in interpreting and translating their own response to local heritage. This is for Everyone, A Derelict Chorale and Remixed and Remade centred on commissions to artists to create their own responses to heritage narratives in digital formats.

We’ve also documented our projects and put the outcomes up on our Smart Heritage map that was accessible in the town centre via WiFi. It bought original creative works made both by professionals and beginners to public space. Below are some of the significant digital projects that we have produced.