Immersive Storytelling at a Public Festival with Snap Spectacles

In partnership with the Snap team (best known for Snapchat), we used their new AR glasses, Spectacles, to create a first-of-its-kind augmented reality experience for the Winter Lights Festival.

Set within an 8m x 8m dedicated zone in Merrion Square Park, surrounded by physical light installations, visitors put on the Spectacles and stepped into a five-minute interactive winter story. The experience combined:

• Immersive, spatial storytelling
• Game-based interaction
• Stunning winter-themed visuals
• Location-based entertainment design

Participants embarked on a magical journey where they helped bring the winter star back to life, decorated a Christmas tree, and explored a beautifully animated festive world layered seamlessly onto the real environment.

By blending physical space, digital visuals, and narrative gameplay, we transformed festival-goers from spectators into active participants.

The AR activation stayed true to the spirit of Winter Lights—magic, wonder, and beauty—while delivering something completely unexpected. The experience was intuitive, accessible, and designed to delight audiences of all ages in a public setting.

‍

The experience demonstrated the power of spatial and digital storytelling in public cultural events and showcased how AR can elevate festivals beyond traditional installations. Some of the highlights include:

• Thousands of festival-goers experienced the activation during the festival run
• Achieved strong organic engagement and positive press coverage
• Received an average audience rating of over 9/10
• Widely praised for its originality and emotional impact

We helped Dublin City Council redefine what a public festival experience can be by blending technology, creativity, and storytelling to create something totally unforgettable.

This project stands as a landmark example of location-based entertainment and cultural AR innovation, proving that digital experiences can meaningfully enhance public spaces while preserving their magic.

Immersive augmented reality offers cultural organisations a high-impact way to innovate without the cost or complexity of large-scale physical infrastructure. By shifting audiences from passive spectators to active participants, AR delivers deeper engagement, stronger emotional connection, and higher perceived public value, all within a compact physical footprint. Rather than relying on scale alone, experiences like this create memorable moments that people talk about, share, and remember long after the event.

For councils and cultural bodies, this represents a strong return on both investment and experience. Immersive storytelling supports engagement, satisfaction, and reputational goals while remaining flexible, repeatable, and future-focused, making it especially well suited to annual festivals and public programming.

Benefits include:

• Higher engagement and dwell time per visitor
• Strong audience satisfaction and word-of-mouth impact
• Earned media and “first-of-its-kind” visibility
• Low physical footprint with no permanent infrastructure
• Reusable, adaptable digital content year-to-year