Open-air museum Operation Dynamo Dunkirk 1940

Take place in an open air discovery where the city becomes your field of exploration! Make your own journey and relive a major moment of history.

Where events take place, get an innovative app to discover and immerse yourself in history

Life scenes are revealed along the journey: augmented historical reenactments, interactive stories, commented virtual reality, videos and archive resources. The story reveals different contexts and points of view. A playful and resolutely immersive approach, which promotes the interpretation of different episodes of Operation Dynamo.

Go from discovery to discovery through a guidance system that adapts to your trips and helps you to identify the practical services around you (transport, infrastructure...), to fully enjoy your historical journeys.

At the heart of a turning point in World War II

Operation Dynamo marks the largest re-embarkation operation in history.

While 400,000 British and English soldiers were surrounded near Dunkirk by German troops, in just nine days more than 338,000 Allied soldiers are evacuated by sea to England.

Under continuous air attacks, almost a third of the soldiers are evacuated from the beaches.

  • Production
  • Experiential design & project management (study, identity, design, engineering, development & technologies, staging and production of the app and his experiences, 3D modeling, reenactment, immersive discoveries) :
    2makesense SAS
    Contracting authority & historical resources :
    Urban Community of Dunkirk (CUD)

    Our subcontractors:
    Trail narration (writing, research of historical resources) :
    Ludodago
    Video captation session by drone around the Fort des Dunes and the batteries of Zuydcoote :
    WeDroneU
  • Many thanks to
  • Jean Bart high school and its students
    Olivier VERMESCH from la société Dunkerquoise d’Histoire et d’Archéologie
    Pierre METSU from l’association Mémorial du Souvenir
    William MAUFROY, Nicolas FOURNIER from Archives de Dunkerque - Centre de la mémoire urbaine d’agglomération

Available in English and French

Overview
Discover the trailer
Innovations to bring life to history
Discover at your own pace
Several walk paths and points of views
Live the story of several protagonists

See the Operation Dynamo through the eyes of soldiers and civilians.

Each character reveals their story, bringing you back to their unique journeys and experiences, contextualizing and promoting the historical interpretation of events.

Discoveries
An interactive guidance system

Find out what's around you and let yourself be guided.

You are at the heart of the adventure, and can live freely or through the differents characters. Each one of them invites you throughout discoveries and retrace the history of the operation from their points of view.

Historical resources
In the footsteps of the largest evacuation of World War II

The application help you to discover historical resources within a concrete dimension.

Audio and video archives, testimonials... in the open air, rediscover the traces of history from an educational perspective.

Immersion
Discover augmented experiences

Unique interactive experiences immerse yourself into the heart of Operation Dynamo. Watch Stuka's strikes, disaster areas, soldiers waiting on the beaches and much more ...

Disappeared sites and scenes of life are thus reenacted with the help of virtual or augmented reality.

The past come back to life, through your smartphone.

Bus, walk, bike and car
Take advantage of the infrastructures of the Urban Community of Dunkirk

The application adapts to your trips so that you can fully enjoy your visit in the city.

You will never be lost: the application helps you to easily identify where you are and to get information on the free public transports at Dunkirk.

Take a meal break, find a pharmacy, a cultural space ... the app also give you useful information on what surrounds you, so that you can make your trips at your own pace.

And many other events to discover
News from the Dunkirk Urban community

News is also at the heart of the app, useful for being informed of any events that may be encountered during your stay. The opportunity to extend your visiting experience.

The navigation system easily guide you to these places if you are in the city.

Historical immersion
plenty of immersive experiences to discover

(i) Overview of AR (augmented reality) and VR (virtual reality) experiences. Sunken boats, Stuka attack, troops evacuating Dunkirk Beaches, Jean-Bart square on fire, drone flight above "Fort des dunes" and Zuydcoote battery, Bastion 32, start of WWII, german troops in Dunkirk

Reconstitution
History and locations reconstituted to match reality
Technologies
Geolocation and interpretation systems for urban networks
Take part in the stories
Characters full of life
Links
Press releases