Thanks to Chapters’ award-winning campaign for Hoensbroek castle, acclaimed the most beautiful castle of the Netherlands,
they also won the ‘best museum’ award. With the award money,
the dream of letting the castle come to life was realised by Chapters.
Chapters was given a tour through the castle by the castle’s curator. Her storytelling abilities brought every room in the castle to life. After taking the tour without a storyteller, we realised - in order to ‘make the castle come to life’ - we needed to create something extraordinary to realise this dream.
How can we make the experience of a private tour accessible to every visitor?
In our strategy, we first looked at what is already on offer - which are mainly events & tours for children. For adults, a castle tour can be taken with a descriptive pamphlet - which does not speak to the imagination. How can we speak to the imagination of adults?
With vivid images. With characters. With sound and movement.
The result? A multimedia exhibition.
The stories of the castle are what make the castle come to life.
We named the multimedia exhibition ‘Versleutelde Verhalen’, which translates to ‘Secret Stories’.
For each story, we wrote a storyline. For each storyline, we created characters.
Presenting these stories in each space of the castle through a medieval character is the concept of our multimedia exhibition. Each visitor is given a key to digitally unlock the castle’s secret stories.
Ancient corridors, secret rooms, and hidden treasures. If these walls could talk…With your own key to Hoensbroek Castle, you can unlock the best-kept stories in
the interactive ‘Secret Stories' tour - the largest multimedia exhibition in a Limburg castle.
Each story is presented in a mirrored exhibit, in which a medieval character appears when activated with the key. The characters tell stories written by Chapters - some stories are written on mirrored displays.
Some exhibits have more (multimedia) facets than others, with pepper ghosts appearing, or unique objects presented behind glass. Each exhibit is designed, decorated, and illustrated by Chapters.
In the illustrations, we looked closely at what decorative drawings were typical for medieval times to make the story authentic.
‘Versleutelde Verhalen’ is the largest multimedia exhibition in a Limburg castle, for which chapters has designed the concept and produced the entire exhibition in collaboration with Monas Advies, Historisch Goud, Kasteel Hoensbroek, and Submedia.
