Cadw: 360° Film & Digital Heritage

The collaboration between 4Pi Productions and Cadw spans over a decade of digitally documenting Wales' historic sites and making them accessible to audiences who might never set foot inside a medieval castle or stand beneath an historic abbey.

What began as capturing individual heritage locations grew into a multi-layered programme including 360° fulldome films, 20+ bilingual interactive virtual tours, 3D scanning and live dome activations installed inside the heritage sites themselves. Two major outputs define this partnership: the "Open Doors Online" digital heritage programme, which brought Cadw's sites to audiences worldwide during the pandemic, and "From the Shadows of the Stone," a 360° fulldome film that explores Welsh heritage from the air and the ground.

Digital heritage at scale

Cadw manages over 130 historic monuments across Wales. The challenge was not simply to photograph them but to create digital experiences that communicate the weight and texture of these places to people who cannot visit in person.

Each site carries its own identity, history and physical constraints. Filming inside a medieval castle ruin is not the same as capturing a Victorian ironworks or a Neolithic burial chamber. 360° capture requires controlling the entire environment, and heritage sites are not controlled environments. Crew, equipment, visitors and weather all appear in every frame.

Pandemic pivot

When Covid-19 forced the closure of all Cadw sites in 2020, there was a sudden and immediate need to provide virtual access to places that were physically shut. Through the Open Doors Online programme, people were able to virtually visit and explore sites that were otherwise closed, in some cases experiencing them completely empty for the first time. The organisation needed a solution fast, one that could work in multiple languages, across all devices and for audiences with no prior experience of virtual content.

Dome inside a castle

Installing a portable 7m fulldome dome inside Raglan Castle and Beaumaris Castle introduced its own complexity. Moving specialist projection equipment into a 600 year old structure, ensuring safe audience flow through a heritage environment, and delivering a consistent viewing experience in an uncontrolled outdoor setting all required careful planning.

Open Doors online

4Pi Productions captured, produced, designed and coded 20+ interactive bilingual virtual experiences using a broad range of specialist capture technologies from its extensive in-house equipment: 360° and 4K 16:9 video, 3D scanning, drone film and photography.

The in-house interactive design team built bilingual (English and Welsh) experiences that work across platforms and devices for the broadest possible audience reach and ease of accessibility. Beyond the virtual tours themselves, the team also provided multimedia content from each site including videos, photos and motion graphics to feed into the national PR launch across press, radio, TV and social media.

From the Shadows of the Stone

The 360° fulldome film explores a selection of Cadw sites from both the air and the ground, spanning locations across Wales. While the primary aim was to inspire future visits, the immersive screenings achieved something deeper. Audiences consistently left the dome with smiles on their faces and extremely positive feedback, highlighting the emotional impact of experiencing heritage in this format.

Castle dome activations

4Pi toured its portable 7m dome to different castles across Wales and installed it inside Raglan Castle and Beaumaris Castle. Over 14 days of activation, 14,252 visitors experienced the immersive film. For 76.5% of audiences it was their first immersive experience.

Open Doors online

The virtual tours programme delivered results that surprised even Cadw. The campaign secured a total reach of 1,311,309 visits, up 162.3% on the original KPI. It generated 44,374 positive social media engagements and comments, up 121.9% on the original KPI. It directed 34,081 users to the Open Doors Online webpage, an increase of 581.6% on the original objective.

The success led to a further commission to create additional virtual experiences, with the long-term goal of providing a virtual twin of all key Cadw sites across Wales.

Dome activations

The 14 day immersive activation at Raglan Castle and Beaumaris Castle drew 14,252 visitors. 89.4% responded that this experience inspired them to visit any of the featured Cadw sites, proving the power of immersive content to attract new audiences and prove to the commissioning clients how effective an immersive campaign can become for their ongoing strategies.

Legacy

Beyond public engagement, the programme serves as a precise digital archive of the current state of some of Wales' most impressive historic sites, a valuable long-term resource for heritage conservation. The collaboration also established a working model for how immersive technology can bring cultural heritage to audiences who face geographical, physical or financial barriers to visiting in person.

The film has been screened at RAM Film Festival (Rovereto, Italy), which is an international archaeological film festival covering archeology, history and anthropology.