Virtual Reality Experience: School-House Virtual Museum

In 2018, the Municipality of Prishtina initiated a process to construct the Hertica School House Museum. The museum would be located on the site of the Hertica family house, which was used as the “Sami Frashëri” high school between 1992 and 1999, during a time that ethnic based segregation and violence was imposed in Kosova by the Serbian regime. Reflecting on the interest to build and engage a broader community the SHVM project was launched. It was designed based on participatory, interdisciplinary, and co-creative methods with students and a larger community of researchers, artists, and practitioners working on heritage and memory. Grounded in a particular site of memory, and co-produced with a 'post-memory generation', the SHVM is associated with private and silenced memories of past civic resistance in Kosovo. Using written and orally narrated stories, images, videos and immersion within a virtually reconstructed physical space, The experience offers a means to explore spaces, narratives, and technologies relevant to a particular cultural memory and heritage.

This experience fuses virtual museums, education, research and public engagement towards preservation and dissemination of cultural heritage. With increased focus is from museum exhibits to visitor experience, virtual museums are important to facilitating mobility and the plurality of voices and perspectives. Also, VR as a pedagogic vehicle can employ creative and cross-disciplinary experimentation and learning.