The creation of ‘virtual archives’ of community spaces has the potential to engage community members who inhabit (or, through some other form of lived experience, identify with) those spaces as active participants in the collaborative construction of knowledge regarding their cultural, historical and social significance. In the representation of community spaces using ‘immersive’ and ‘embodied’ technologies and the open dissemination of the resulting archival materials through online platforms, new ways of accessing, experiencing and reflecting upon the quotidian reality of such spaces are facilitated. With the addition of participatory features, the virtual archive is reconfigured not simply as a method of representing data, but as a dialogic platform with the potential to democratise the processes through which situated knowledge is produced. In this chapter, each of these arguments will be evaluated and problematised using a specific virtual archive project, developed by the author, and a specific community as an illustrative case study. The overarching intention is to explicate how new forms of virtual archive might challenge the power relationships historically associated with archives as privileged spaces of knowledge production, while simultaneously avoiding the many pitfalls associated with digitally mediated forms of experience and participation, both of which are well documented within the academic disciplines of new and digital media.

Experience Temple Works (Jackson, 2016) is a multisensory and participatory virtual archive of a Grade I listed building in South Leeds. The building, known as Temple Works, was originally constructed as a flax mill in 1840 and represents a significant stage in the development of the textile industries in the North of England and the wider industrialisation of the region (Elton, 1993). Possessing a stone facade inspired by the architecture of Egyptian temples and reputedly containing the largest single room in the world (at the time of construction), the building embodies a complex and contested history of economic, social and architectural problems. During the creation of Experience Temple Works, the building was no longer a site of manufacturing but rather the residence of a community of artists, makers and performers. This community, hereafter Temple.