Unflinching hologram installation tells stories of UK’s ‘war on the poor’

Manchester's Museum of Austerity uses AR to depict real people with disabilities who fell through society's safety net

It is impossible to look away from the shimmering figures that emerge in what appears at first to be an empty room. And that is the point.

Through a headset donned at the entrance of Museum of Austerity, which opened at the Home theatre in Manchester on Wednesday, holograms of people glow in eerie augmented reality. Approaching them, they feel real and touchable but also ghostly and ephemeral, which they are: they are real people who died when our societal safety net did not catch them.

The Museum of Austerity installation, an English Touring Theatre (ETT) co-production with National Theatre Immersive Storytelling Studio and Trial & Error Studio, will be at Home Manchester from 8 to 11 November 2023. Each session lasts 45 minutes, running 11.30am-9.15pm, Wednesday to Saturday.