VICE WORLD NEWS
THE UNFILTERED HISTORY TOUR
An unofficial guide to the British Museum’s disputed artefacts.
The Unfiltered History Tour highlights the most disputed artefacts inside the British Museum, told from the perspective of the communities they were removed from.
Challenge
Connect with a younger readership
VICE World News is a newly formed brand that provides global news reporting for young audiences internationally.
The challenge was to grow their cross-platform audience by cutting through a crowded media environment, while sticking to their editorial mission of placing Vice at the forefront of conversations around under-reported issues like colonialism. We had to connect with a younger readership, and find a way for them to embrace these issues beyond news headlines and hot takes on social media.
context
world’s largest receiver of stolen goods
The British Museum is the world’s largest receiver of stolen goods. With over 8 million objects, that’s a lot of potentially looted artefacts. But young audiences have only heard the imperialist version of how they got there.
At a time when young Britons are questioning their colonial past more than ever, the Unfiltered History Tour is a secret tour of the British Museum’s stolen colonial artefacts, to decolonise centuries of imperial narrative as told by native experts from countries these artefacts were taken from.
Results
a sharp turn in the opposite direction
In a YouGov poll conducted weeks after the Tour was launched, 59% of Britons said they believed the Parthenon Marbles (part of the Tour) belonged in Greece, a sharp turn in the opposite direction.
18M
Impressions
100K+
Tours unfiltered
990K
Sq. ft of the British Museum unfiltered
40%
Rise in Tik Tok followers
49%
Increase in total impressions on Instagram
2M
Earned video views on Tik Tok
