This article was updated on 22 Aug 2024 to reflect new statements from the Wigan Council.

Wigan Council has tapped virtual reality (VR) to promote healthy and happy living amongst its residents, it revealed on Tuesday.

The Greater Manchester town’s Digital Wigan teams are touring venues around the region to promote the initiative.

Using its VR kit, the Council can transport people to virtual kitchens to learn about cooking healthier meals and experiment with recipes. Others include transporting elderly users to their favourite destinations for a virtual holiday, where their travel, mobility, or cognitive abilities are limited.

The council also noted that the Higher Folds Community Centre hosted a session on Monday, with a future one taking place on 2 September from 12:00 to 14:00.

Along with engaging VR cooking sessions, The Council’s Be Well Wigan teams are allowing participants to buy and cook with real ingredients and collect recipe cards from the community centre’s pantry.

The news comes after a Better Connected Community Fun Day event rose to popularity at the public event.

Taking place at the Bramble House at Worsley Hall, children and young adults played games and activites in the virtual world.

Comments on Wigan Council’s VR Adventure

Cllr Nazia Rehman, Cabinet Member for Resources Finance and Transformation, Wigan Council, said in a statement that the digital world offered “so many additional resources.”

She added it was a “priority for us to introduce them to our communities in a welcoming, educational and fun environment.”

Cllr Rehman continued,

“Our Digital Wigan team are on hand to help anyone overcome any worries or barriers they might have to accessing the technology and to help people discover that having a go at VR can not only be enjoyable, but can offer lots of social benefits, such as building confidence and introducing new skills.”

Speaking further about the Better Connected Community Fun Day event, the Cunningham Family commented on their experience.

Daniel Cunningham, aged 10, said that it was “fantastic” that people could attend such community events.

He said that “VR is already part of our lives and will become increasingly so in the future.”

Furthermore, an elderly user of the Council’s VR travel programme discussed her virtual climb of Loughrigg in the world-famous Lake District.

She explained,

“It was lovely, it’s taken me back 20 years. I couldn’t have done this sort of thing when I was young and I really, really enjoyed it. Who would have thought I’d go up Loughrigg again at 2. I just wanted to stay there.”

VR Offers Residents “Sense of Wonder” — Wigan Council

Speaking to D×M, a spokesman from the Wigan Council explained that the organisation had used both Meta Quest 3 and Meta Quest 3 headsets for its VR projects.

When asked about whether or not the Council would expand its VR programme to other use cases, the spokesman confirmed that Digital Wigam teams were already exploring how VR could “motivate young people to engage in physical exercise [to] help tackle obesity.”

He explained further,

“The team has also been working alongside local NHS mental health professionals who support adults with severe mental health needs, and the feedback from these sessions has been overwhelmingly positive.”

The spokesman continued that the Council also planned to “launch a Virtual Reality Lending Library in early 2025.”

Through the programme, it would provide the Wigan’s Digital Communities Partnership with free resources to “develop further use cases tailored to the needs of the residents they serve,” he added.

Regarding additional projects, the spokesperson noted,

“One area we are keen to explore is bringing Wigan’s local environment to the homes of our housebound residents. This could involve creating a series of 360-degree Google Sphere images at key heritage locations. We are also interested in user-generated content to create virtual reality local exhibitions or using 360-degree cameras to record music events and other cultural activities for streaming in VR.”

Finally, when asked how VR experiences differed from traditional outreach approaches, the spokesman stated that prior experience of trialling VR in local communities revealed that “residents have reported an incredible sense of wonder.”

He added:

“The beauty of VR lies in its ability to make online information accessible, engaging, and utterly captivating. Collaborating with the Wigan Athletic Community Trust, we’ve discovered new avenues for community engagement. Particularly remarkable were the powerful reminiscence experiences, which completely immersed users in environments of personal significance.”

Furthermore, VR could potentially provide users with “a more intuitive set of functional digital skills,” he explained.

He added that such technologies could boost accessibility and enjoyment of the digital world compared to traditional devices like PCs and laptops.

“In this way, VR can help overcome digital reluctance,” the Wigan Council spokesman concluded.

VR Programmes for People with Special Needs

News of the community outreach programme comes after Chrysalis, a charity based in Wigton, North Cumbria, rolled out VR headsets to host bespoke experiences for clients with learning disabilities.

With the assistance of a £2,000 Fibrus Broadband grant, Chrysalis bought several VR headsets and educational software for the pilot project.

Similar to the Be Well Wigan initiative, Chrysalis offered VR travel experiences to its clients, allowing them to acclimate to locations that would otherwise prove challenging due to sensory concerns.

A recent study from the IRCCS Don Gnocchi Foundation documented the enhanced metrics from an experiment with people with special needs.

It found that metrics for inhibition, flexibility, planning, and visual attention had dramatically improved “than before the intervention,” with subjects retaining increase performance after a six-month period.

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