The Vixen keert terug!

A Vixen’s Tale, the award-winning immersive experience created for Welsh National Opera, has been adapted for installation at ALTASH, a digital festival in Ashford, Kent, curated by tech-oriented dance company AΦE.

A Vixen’s Tale was originally installed at the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff, but now our plucky Vixen and her friends find themselves appearing in a series of shop windows. Audiences can scan a series of QR codes and access scenes from the experience via Instagram filters. The result is a completely fresh take on A Vixen’s Tale, with the same unmistakable illustrations and animations from the wonderful Xavier Segers, but presented in an entirely new way.

You can try all four of the ‘seasons’ of A Vixen’s Tale for yourself by scanning the QR codes or tapping the images below:

SPRING

SUMMER

AUTUMN

WINTER

Arcade part of team selected for FestivalUK*2022

Arcade is thrilled to announce that our submission to FestivalUK*2022 has been successful! We have been selected as one of 30 creative teams, out of the 299 teams who applied, for the research and development phase of the Festival that culminates in pitching our idea to the Festival panel.

FestivalUK*2022 is a programme created to celebrate the best of UK STEAM, ultimately commissioning ten large scale public engagement projects that will showcase the UK’s creativity and innovation to the world, and we join an incredibly exciting team now competing for one of those ten commissions:

  • London Marathon Events (Hugh Brasher and Penny Dain, Lead Organisation)
  • Imperial War Museums (Ellie Head and Michael Hoeschen)
  • National Physical Laboratory (Sundeep Bhandari)
  • Welsh National Opera (Emma Flatley and Tianyi Lu)
  • NTS Live (Tabitha Thorlu-Bangura)
  • Dr Rashmi Becker
  • Kinjal Dave
  • and, of course, Arcade (Jon Meggitt and Alex Book)
The full set of teams can be found here: https://www.festival2022.uk/the-r-d-the-30-creative-teams  

Alex Book, Arcade Chief Strategy Officer, said: “We could not be more proud that the FestivalUK*2022 team have looked at this incredible collaboration of creative talents, and selected us as one of just 30 teams tasked with thinking big and coming up something truly spectacular. We are so privileged to be a part of this process, and so excited to see what we come up with.”

Hugh Brasher, Event Director of team lead London Marathon Events, said: “We’re hugely excited by this amazing team and working together on a vision for engaging with millions of people in Great Britain and around the world. This is a wonderful opportunity to create a truly innovative project that will live long in people’s memories.”

The full FestivalUK*2022 press release can be found here: https://www.festival2022.uk/press-area

The Vixen Wins!

A Vixen's Tale Poster

Congratulations to the Vixen’s Tale team and our client Welsh National Opera, on picking up a Bronze award in the highly competitive and prestigious Creativepool Annual 2020! Entered into the ‘Wave’ category for innovation, the judges loved A Vixen’s Tale‘s mixed physical and digital experience, and the way the augmented reality presented such an expected face for opera.

A Vixen’s Tale launched to the public in the Millennium Centre in Cardiff late last year. During its first three weeks the installation welcomed 5,939 recorded visitors during the opening hours alone, with over 80% of groups including younger audiences – a key metric of success for WNO.

A Vixen’s Tale has been shortlisted for several awards, and was selected for inclusion in the Creative Review Annual as well as Creativepool’s Annual 2020.

“We are so proud of our little Vixen,” said Simon Hobbs, Arcade Co-Founder and Chief Design Officer, “she just keeps going and going and we’re praying she has the chance to get out into the world again soon.”

A Vixen’s Tale was due to be installed at London’s Southbank Centre in May and potentially embark on an international tour, but plans have had to be put on ice for now because of the pandemic.

The win for A Vixen’s Tale follows success at Creativepool in 2019, where Arcade won with Roxy the Ranger, created for SEA LIFE’s London Aquarium.

Read more about A Vixen’s Tale hier, and SEA LIFE’s Roxy hier.

To find out more about Arcade and our award-winning work, please get in contact.

Arcade Creative Pool Awards
Arcade's 'Roxy the Ranger', created for SEA LIFE's London Aquarium, won at Creativepool in 2019

A Vixen’s Tale celebrated in Creative Review 2020 Annual!

A Vixen’s Tale, the mixed reality immersive experience created for Welsh National Opera, has been honoured in Creative Review’s prestigious awards publication, The Annual 2020, one of the creative industry’s most valued awards. We are thrilled to be included in this “showcase of the year’s best work across advertising, design, digital, gaming and more” alongside big-hitting brands like IKEA, Spotify, Channel 4, Nike, The Guardian, KFC, Lacoste, BBC and Adidas, and world-leading agencies such as Mother, Droga 5, TBWA and Wieden + Kennedy.

Designed to immerse opera-goers new and old in the story of Leoš Janáček’s iconic The Cunning Little Vixen, A Vixen’s Tale originally launched Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff in October 2019. During its hugely successful month-long installation, it welcomed 5,939 recorded visitors, with over 80% of groups including younger audiences – a key metric of success for WNO.

A Vixen’s Tale has continued to tour, with the most recent installation at London’s South Bank sadly postponed due to the Coronavirus. Fingers crossed, she’ll be back soon!

Read all about it on Creative Review hier or click below to see how we designed the experience to help WNO challenge perceptions of opera and connect with an entirely new audience.

Learn more about connecting with new audiences via immersive arts

A Vixen's Tale

A Vixen’s Tale launches!

Welsh National Opera Vixen Teaser Image

Arcade is delighted to bring augmented reality to opera with A Vixen’s Tale, a mixed physical and digital experience designed to immerse opera-goers new and old in the story of Leoš Janáček’s iconic The Cunning Little Vixen. The work was commissioned by Welsh National Opera (WNO), and launched at WNO’s Explore Opera Day on October 5th at Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff.

A Vixen’s Tale is a free experience that invites visitors of all ages to step into the world of The Cunning Little Vixen, where they can use augmented reality to experience a hidden world of enchanting narratives. Through playful interactions, immersive illustrations and an arresting soundscape set across five physical arches, visitors will walk with the opera’s Vixen and experience her story for themselves.

A Vixen’s Tale will run until November 3rd, with plans for it to tour nationally and internationally throughout 2020.

Find me a fox and make it Snappy

Snapchat-Enabled Digital Billboard

Arcade have published our first Snapchat lens as a part of our work with Welsh National Opera. To support the immersive experience A Vixen’s Tale, opening in Cardiff on October 5th, we added a hidden surprise to the #WNOfollowthevixen poster campaign across the city.

Using a custom lens for Snapchat, built in Snap’s Lens Studio, we created an AR experience that gives a glimpse of what visitors to A Vixen’s Tale can expect, and introduces the world to the Vixen herself.

A refrain from The Cunning Little Vixen, Leoš Janáček’s opera that is the inspiration for both A Vixen’s Tale and the Snap lens, is used to add an operatic soundtrack.

Snapchat lens features music from The Cunning Little Vixen, opera in 3 Acts, by Leoš Janácek. Revised version by Jiri Zahrádka, by arrangement with Universal Edition A.G. Wien. ‘Bezi liska Tábouru‘ appears courtesy of Decca Classics.

Tickets to The Cunning Little Vixen can be bought hier. A Vixen’s Tale is open to all, for free, at Wales Millennium Centre from October 5th to November 3rd.

Arcade partners with Welsh National Opera

The Cunning Little Vixen Opera Poster

Following a competitive pitch and period of embargo while work has been feverishly flying ahead, we are delighted to announce Arcade’s first partnership with Welsh National Opera.

A Vixen’s Tale is inspired by one of the pieces WNO is staging this autumn, Leoš Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen. It will take the form of a human-scale sensory ‘tunnel book’, inviting visitors to step physically into the opera’s themes and settings where they can use augmented reality to experience a hidden world of enchanting narratives. Through playful interactions, immersive illustrations and an arresting soundscape set across five physical arches, visitors will walk with the titular Vixen and experience her story for themselves.

A Vixen’s Tale is the latest innovative digital project for WNO, following the success of recent work including Freedom 360, Rhondda Rebel, WNO Field en Magic Butterfly, cementing their status as digital pioneers.

“We are thrilled to be working with WNO, who continue to set the benchmark for innovation in arts and culture,” said Jon Meggitt, Arcade CEO, “A Vixen’s Tale is one of our most ambitious projects to date, and we can’t wait to see the effect it has on opera-goers old and new.”

David Massey, WNO Digital Producer said, “We’re hugely excited to be collaborating with Arcade on this exceptional project. Digital innovation is very much at the heart of many of our engagement projects. We hope A Vixen’s Tale will immerse and delight audiences of all ages, giving us the opportunity to explore new and exciting ways to tell stories infusing music, theatre and performance.”

The free experience is open to all and will run for four weeks at Wales Millennium Centre, opening on Saturday 5 October when WNO will also hold an Explore Opera Day. It will also be preceded by an augmented marketing campaign for those in the Cardiff area – details coming soon!