It could almost be a scene from Tomb Raider. A young woman peers around the 15th century chapel of Santa Chiara, looking for inspiration and adventure. She’s wide-eyed and curious, taking her surroundings in – except we’re actually in the V&A’s stunning new medieval and renaissance rooms in London, and the video gamer is Sophia George, a 22-year-old BAFTA winner who has become the museum’s first Game Designer In Residence. “It’s exciting,” she says, “but also just a little bit daunting.”
Unsurprisingly so. The V&A’s residency co-ordinator Ruth Lloyd is keen to stress that rather than commissioning specific work, she envisages that George will use the collections as inspiration for a game or app that “can create new meanings and new connections for our public.” There are, however, a staggering 4.5m objects in its collection – no wonder George finds the project, which begins in earnest in October, a bit scary. Sensibly, she has a plan.
