The Unfiltered History Tour

Why it works

An unofficial guided tour, running inside the British Museum without its permission. VICE World News and Dentsu Webchutney picked ten contested objects in the collection — among them the Benin Bronzes, the Parthenon Marbles, the Rosetta Stone and the Gweagal Shield — and built Instagram augmented-reality filters that recognise each artefact in the gallery and replay, on the visitor's phone, the moment it was taken from its homeland, backed by a ten-part podcast of interviews with ten experts. People outside London could take the tour virtually. Making phone filters identify objects behind glass in changing light took a field researcher more than 30 visits over eight months, all without the museum's knowledge; the project took 18 months and over 100 people. At Cannes 2022 it won three Grands Prix: Brand Experience & Activation, Radio & Audio, and Social & Influencer. It is studied as guerrilla institutional critique — cheap, ubiquitous technology used to annotate someone else's building — and as a news brand advertising itself through journalism.