One of our earliest heritage projects and a pre-cursor to the Muslim Museum Initiative was the Islam in British Stone pilot, back in 2008. The aim of the pilot project was to promote Muslim heritage sites in Britain. Along with the earliest mosques in Britain we explored British buildings influenced by Islamic design. We chose to explore the built environment as sites and places can be visited, seen, touched and physically experienced.

Young people came up with a project that used computer gaming technology, 3d animation, film, photography and the Web to help tell the tale of how Britain has been influenced by Islamic design and how Muslims first established their religious spaces.

Seed-funding from Awards for All enabled us to work with young people to produce an interactive 3D environment of Woking Mosque, the first purpose built mosque in the UK built in 1889. The pilot helped the participants to develop skills in photography, film, 3d design, architectural design, animation, gaming, historic research, web design and project planning and management.

Facilitators and professionals worked with young people to research the building, document it thoroughly by measuring, drawing, photographing and filming. They were then shown how this can be pulled together to produce a computer generated three-dimensional environment, a digital animated sequence, and an online resource.

http://www.islaminbritishstone.co.uk/