Sometime soon, if you visit the State Library, you could be walking past someone who’s secretly trying to escape it.

A few months ago Owen Spear, a psychologist and part-time escape room designer, spotted an invitation from the library to reinvent the place. So he pitched a puzzle experience that would send visitors across the building, seeking hidden corners and treasures, solving their way out of an intricate story.

Owen Spear at the State Library of Victoria.Credit:Darrian Traynor

Spear is still developing the idea, but he has big plans. “In a good escape room every object in the room is relevant and meaningful,” he said. “I’m thinking, what if I could use the screws in Ned Kelly’s armour in a puzzle?”

The library’s inaugural Alchemy program on Wednesday awarded $20,000 each to 14 winning proposals, including Spear’s, chosen from more than 300 applicants, to develop their creative concepts.

They asked for big ideas for experiences that would bring the building (and its digital extension) to life in a surprising way: no mean feat for a 167-year-old institution.

Library chief executive Kate Torney said Alchemy was born from the library’s recent renovation, followed by the pandemic.

“We really felt that it was an opportunity to rethink the experiences that people were having at the library,” she said. “I think there’s some confidence building that we have to do as a library, and more broadly, to encourage people to come back out.

“But also we’ve got these amazing new spaces … we really wanted to throw open the doors and say ‘help us do this’. What are the experiences that we should be offering in a 21st-century library?”

With the latest lockdown easing the building is, Torney said, buzzing at close to pre-pandemic occupation levels. But they have a big new digital membership, built during Melbourne’s lockdowns, they want to keep as well, so Alchemy’s winning proposals often bridge the physical and digital realms.

They include augmented reality games, a new trivia podcast and artistic dining and performance lectures reflecting on the library’s texts.

Torney was drawn to the idea of anchoring an escape room experience in the collection. “I really love the sense of mystery, the sense of playfulness, but also the appreciation of the collection and the stories within the collection,” she said.

And another experience caught her imagination too: a team proposed an “ambi-sonic library”, long form recordings from library spaces in 3D audio, to put listeners into a virtual-reality space designed around sound.

Sound and music artists Madeleine Flynn and Tim Humphrey are developing the idea with two members of the Society of Visually Impaired Sound Artists, Fayen D’Evie and Andy Slater, who have worked with institutions across the world to rethink how audio descriptions can work.

Slater, who’s based in Chicago, will help mix and edit recordings captured by the others in all corners of the building, including some that visitors never see.

“Libraries are a place for controlled volume, for quiet,” he said. “But we’re listening.”

“It’s treating the library, as not just being about the printed written visual material, but as this extensive, sensorial space,” D’Evie added.

Spear also wants to transport his escape room participants: to offer an immersive sense of the stories and the history around them in the building.

“I would love to put contraptions and puzzles hidden all around the library,” he said. “I’m excited to see what I can use. Can I use some of the books? I don’t know. But it would be cool.”

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