Not everyone lives near a church, synagogue, mosque or Sikh temple. But thanks to virtual reality worlds, you can still explore these places and listen to the houses of worship talk about their special features.
Those who do not have the opportunity to visit a place of worship can already do so virtell. This is made possible by various projects.
One of them is called "Living Stones and comes from the North Church, which invites schools, congregations and confessional groups to turn their church into a VR experience. The idea came from the religion teacher Friederike Wenisch, who is a pioneer in this field with her seventh graders.
Religion lessons with a difference
The students photographed the rooms in the Cem House of the Alevi community in Hamburg with a 360-degree camera and then made them accessible and experienceable digitally on a PC or with virtual reality glasses. To complete the experience, they also had the customs and principles of Alevism explained to them. After a text was created, it was recorded and integrated into the VR world as an audio file. All these steps on the way to a VR world that can be experienced, in which buildings speak for themselves, are part of Friederike Wenisch's religious education lessons at the Altona grammar school in Hamburg.
"I have experienced that young people are highly motivated to work when they are given the prospect of being allowed to immerse themselves in VR worlds. And being allowed to create them is something even more special," says Wenisch. Each of the teaching units she has designed has also been made into teaching modules in the Digital Learning Lab made available to the students. In this way, teachers who do not want to or cannot build their own VR world with their pupils can also enjoy such an interactive, playfully structured teaching unit. It also offers pupils the opportunity to explore places of worship that are rather rare in Germany, to which they would otherwise have had a longer journey, in a decentralised way and on their own - and almost lifelike in virtual reality. "On the one hand, it suggests to the pupils that they are alone, which increases their concentration. On the other hand, the large representations in VR have a completely different effect and leave great impressions," says Friederike Wenisch.
VR costs
To get something like this off the ground with their pupils, they needed a strong partner - because a VR camera and audio recording devices are not cheap. "We found the idea very interesting because it gives pupils a digital way to get in touch with churches, with places of worship, with religion in general," reports Oliver Quellmalz, Social Media Manager at the Nordkirche. In order to show the staff of the Northern Church how she envisioned the VR worlds, Friederike Wenisch had first cooperated with the "Project RELab digital" from the University of Würzburg under the direction of Jens Palkowitsch-Kühl and Ilona Nord. The test recordings convinced the Nordkirche team. And so the North Church became a cooperation partner, acquired a technical case with a 360-degree camera, tripod and audio recording device, bought VR glasses made of cardboard in large quantities so that they could then be passed on to the congregations and schools more cheaply, and created a page on which the projects can be shown.
Cooperation with other places of worship
They are also open to cooperation with other interested regional churches. Of course, we would like the project to be spread as far as possible," says Quellmalz. It is hoped that in the end many congregations in the North Church will be accessible on the internet as 360-degree videos. There are already enquiries from interested parties.
Friederike Wenisch really enjoys working with the Nordkirche and is grateful to the Nordkirche team for their commitment. She herself is now almost a pro at creating 360-degree videos of places of worship: With her students, for example, she has already created the Kreuzkirche and the Ulu Camii Mosque in Hamburg-Ottensen, the Hohe Weiden Synagogue in Hamburg-Schlump, the Sikh Temple Gurdwara Singh Sabha in Hamburg-Lokstedt and now the Cem House of the Alevis on St. Pauli into the digital world.
Source: Evangelical, Northern Church
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