How can we bring digital technology, performance and curatorial practice together to give young people a sense of creative agency when encountering a historical object? This interdisciplinary, visitor-focused project draws together the curatorial, theatrical, design and technological expertise of three leading partners: the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), the UK's national museum of art, design and performance; Punchdrunk Enrichment, pioneers of educational and community-based immersive theatre; and award-winning creative technology studio, The Workers. Together, the partners intend to prototype a mixed reality environment for the display of archive material - in this case the handwritten manuscripts of Charles Dickens - that will give young people aged 15-18 a sense of creative agency when encountering an historical object. The manuscripts are the best evidence we have of the creative process of one of the UK's most important and renowned authors, whose work has continuing relevance for young people today. Dickens was an observer of urban material culture and life in a period of rapid technological innovation and widespread financial insecurity, a writer who explored themes that still resonate today. However, the act of writing and redrafting on paper is becoming an increasingly rare (perhaps even obsolete) creative practice. The manuscripts might show us how an author revises and imaginatively iterates - but that process needs to be unlocked for visitors. By prototyping an immersive experience, centred on the manuscript, we will explore how digital technologies can augment immersive theatre techniques to create a performative environment, one that does not necessarily rely on performers. We will answer the following questions: How can the interactions between people and objects within a digital and a physical space drive a narrative in a museum context? How can digital technologies put the museum object at the heart of an immersive experience? How can the museum object become part of a performance? Through discovering and understanding Dickens's creative process, we aim to inspire self-expression - an important strand of Punchdrunk Enrichment's projects. We intend for this experience to have a life beyond museum for the children involved - that it will make a lasting appeal to their creative spirit. Getting children to talk about their experiences, encouraging them to write stories, discuss them and expand their vocabulary have been important motivations in Punchdrunk Enrichment's work to date. This research will be of future creative and commercial value by potentially informing the development of a major exhibition on Charles Dickens at the Museum (2020) and the future display of the V&A's nineteenth-century collections, as well as inform practice beyond the museum itself, and is of institutional significance because it will allow us to not only interrogate the latest technologies, but also to help shape and drive innovation in this area with our peers in the creative and technological industries. We will gauge how methodologies identified through the project will help forge new creative practice, within the museum and beyond, and consolidate our findings in a case study and preliminary toolkit. The research will help deepen links between creative industries and research sectors by presenting a case study and toolkit to understand, experiment with and exploit immersive technologies to create new experiences. It will help show how the next generation of digital content and services can be conceptualised, produced and exploited within the UK creative economy.