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Iranian Diaspora Collective

Europe

Publishing

Screenshot of Iran Prison Project's digital experience in the Metaverse

To highlight the human rights issues in Iran, we used tech as innovation to “be the voice” of the Iranian people and galvanise western attention.

Tens of thousands of Iranian people have been held as political prisoners. They are often held without due legal process and have been arrested for ordinary acts of everyday life that are deemed illegal — many of whom are women, artists, journalists, students, LGBTQ people, and even children. 

We were tasked with bringing awareness of this to the rest of the world and being their voice.

We used innovative technology with the Metaverse, a place with no borders or boundaries, to tell the real-life stories of former prisoners.

Solution

An international team of creatives, designers and artists came together to build the Iran Prison Project, a Metaverse recreation of one of the worst places on Earth. 

A digital interpretation of an Iranian prison to galvanise Western attention on the human rights atrocities committed in Iran.

The experience is built as a web-accessible 3D environment, which includes testimonies from imprisoned people. Voice actors alongside a combination of art pieces from original artists and AI-generated images tell the stories of those who have no voice.

To ensure that these testimonies are protected and cannot be discredited, we partnered with a human rights lawyer to store every account in the blockchain. With a callout for more.

We asked people to bear witness by “visiting” the Iran Prison Project in the Metaverse.

Results

Working with the IDC and other human rights organizations, we collected thousands and thousands of testimonies in the first week. And it keeps growing.

The response has been overwhelming. Upon launch, we’ve gathered over 158 million PR impressions overnight. 