Fireground: Greater Manchester’s Firefighting Story
An Augmented and Virtual Reality Museum Experience
Fireground was an immersive digital heritage project created in collaboration with the Greater Manchester Fire Service Museum Trust.
The project explored how augmented and virtual reality could extend the reach of a physical museum, using immersive storytelling to bring the history of firefighting, emergency response, and civic service to life.
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Designed as both a virtual museum experience and a complementary in-museum digital layer, Fireground demonstrated how immersive technology can support learning, accessibility, and engagement with local heritage.
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Project Overview
This project helped shape AVimmerse’s wider approach to immersive heritage, using digital tools to connect people with place, story, and overlooked histories.
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Fireground formed part of a wider ambition to explore how immersive media could be used to interpret historic spaces in new ways. By recreating key environments digitally and layering interpretation through interaction, the project allowed audiences to explore the stories behind Greater Manchester’s firefighting heritage beyond traditional display formats.
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The experience blended historical research, spatial design, and narrative storytelling, placing visitors inside a meaningful environment rather than presenting information passively.
Greater Manchester Fire Service Museum Control Room (22nd May 1968)
Greater Manchester Fire Service Museum Fire Station
The Client
Greater Manchester Fire Service Museum Trust
The Greater Manchester Fire Service Museum Trust oversees the Fireground museum at Rochdale Fire Station, preserving and sharing the history of firefighting across the region.
The Trust was seeking innovative ways to reach new audiences, particularly younger visitors, while enhancing the educational value of the museum’s collection and spaces.
The Project
The Virtual Museum project focused on the digital recreation of the historic Control Room at Rochdale Fire Station, a space central to the coordination of emergency responses across Greater Manchester.
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Through a virtual reality experience, visitors were able to step inside the Control Room, explore its layout, and learn how calls were handled, decisions were made, and resources were deployed during critical moments. Particular emphasis was placed on the role of control room operators, including the often overlooked contributions of women in emergency response roles.
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An augmented reality layer was also developed to integrate directly into the physical museum space. This allowed visitors on site to unlock additional stories, archival imagery, and contextual information, seamlessly connecting the digital and physical experience.
The Goal
The primary goal of the project was to extend the museum experience beyond its physical walls while enriching visits on site.
Key objectives included:
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Engaging younger and digitally native audiences.
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Supporting learning through spatial and experiential storytelling.
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Increasing accessibility to heritage content.
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Encouraging deeper exploration of local civic history.
The project aimed to demonstrate how immersive technology could complement, rather than replace, traditional museum interpretation.
What We Did
AVimmerse led the creative and technical delivery of Fireground, working closely with the museum team to ensure historical accuracy, narrative clarity, and a respectful approach to heritage interpretation.
Virtual Control Room – Immersive Fire Service Museum
Virtual Environment and Spatial Design
A detailed 3D reconstruction of the Control Room was created using archival material, reference photography, and historical consultation. The environment was designed to feel authentic, grounded, and navigable, encouraging curiosity and exploration.
Augmented Reality Museum Layer
The augmented reality experience added a digital interpretive layer within the museum, allowing visitors to access additional stories and content through their devices. This approach supported flexible interpretation without disrupting the physical exhibition space.
Narrative and Interaction Design
Interactive elements were designed to guide visitors through the experience without overwhelming them. Storytelling focused on people, processes, and decision-making, ensuring that technology supported understanding rather than novelty.
Fireground represents an early example of the studio’s approach to combining storytelling, spatial design, and technology in service of meaningful experiences.
Impact and Learning
Fireground demonstrated the potential of immersive media to support museums in telling complex civic stories in engaging and accessible ways. The project reinforced the importance of grounding digital experiences in place, people, and authentic historical context.
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Many of the insights gained through Fireground continue to inform AVimmerse’s approach to immersive heritage, digital storytelling, and place-based experiences across museums, education, and public spaces.
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Many of the lessons from this project continue to influence how we think about digital storytelling in museums and public spaces.
Explore the Project
Elements of the virtual Control Room, augmented reality experiences, and the physical museum context that informed the project’s development have been uploaded to spatial.io and can be access here.
Want to Engage Your Audience?
If you are exploring how immersive technology can support storytelling, interpretation, or engagement within heritage, culture, or education, we would love to talk.
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Get in touch to explore how immersive storytelling could work for your project.​