Don’t miss the Llais Festival, an inspiring event celebrating the power of the human voice. This year, the festival pays tribute to a forgotten heroine from segregation-era America. Plus, experience the UK premiere of the multi-award-winning augmented reality show at BOCS, Wales Millennium Centre’s state-of-the-art space dedicated to immersive experiences and extended reality (XR). Join us for an unforgettable cultural experience in the heart of Cardiff.
Between 1 October and 3 November, Wales Millennium Centre’s BOCSvenue will become a portal through which audiences can step into the segregated world of 1950s America with an augmented reality experience that has won multiple awards, including Best Immersive Work of the 77th Festival de Cannes.
Adapted from a biographical essay written by Tania de Montaigne, Colored: The Unsung Life of Claudette Colvin transports audiences to the United States, to Montgomery Alabama on March 2, 1955 when a 15-year-old Black teenager refuses to give up her seat to a White passenger. Despite threats, she remains seated. After being thrown in jail, she decides to sue the city and plead not guilty. No one ever dared to do such a thing at the time. And yet, no one remembers her name. When, 9 months later, Rosa Parks repeated the same act, everything changed. With the support of a young pastor who had recently arrived in Montgomery, Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks became a hero, the spark that launched the civil rights movement. History was in the making. While Claudette Colvin made it all possible, she was largely forgotten. She still lives in the United States today, and is 83 years old.
In a setting specially-designed for the experience, with benches arranged as on a bus, the emblematic scenes from the life of Claudette Colvin during her fight for civil rights are replayed. Wearing Hollolens2 AR headsets, including bone conduction speakers, audiences become witness to a historical event which paved the way for change to come.
Opened in 2022, BOCS has attracted new audiences to WMC, over 31,000 visitors across 18 immersive experiences. They have been able to experience some the world’s best immersive work – including multi-award-winning In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats, which recreates the 90s rave scene in virtual reality, and Invisible Ocean, which spanned the entire site this summer and has been the most popular digital immersive production that WMC has yet shown, with around 7,5000 attendees in just six weeks.
WMC is also the official Welsh partner of prestigious three-year cross-UK ‘Immersive Arts’ consortium, which is enabling WMC to further its research into immersive technologies, including motion capture and games engines used to make virtual and augmented reality apps. The investment allows WMC to further support skills development in extended reality and break down barriers for artists of all backgrounds to engage with immersive tools.
David Massey, Wales Millennium Centre’s Senior Producer (Immersive Experiences), said:
“Since we launched BOCS – the first space of its kind in any UK arts centre – we have been exploring the possibilities of how immersive experiences can be incorporated into our wider work. The space has opened the door onto fantastic new worlds and new ways of experiencing voices, stories and ideas.
“Past Llais festivals have seen audiences taken on thrilling immersive journeys into the history of the punk and rave scenes. Now with Colored, we take a seat on a bus in 1950s Alabama to bear witness to an overlooked moment in time that was to lead to an event that changed the world. We could not be more excited to stage this deeply affecting and award-winning production which epitomises the potential of immersive digital storytelling.”
Colored, the Unsung Life of Claudette Colvin is directed by Stéphane Foenkinos and Pierre-Alain Giraud, based on the work by Tania de Montaigne, produced by Novaya in partnership with the Centre Pompidou, and co-produced with Flash Forward Entertainment (Taiwan). Winner of the Award for Best Immersive Work of the 77th Festival de Cannes.
