The Imperial War Museum North's new exhibition, Captured: The Extraordinary Life of Prisoners of War, has been designed by Hemisphere.

It is the venue's major exhibition for 2009 and the Manchester-based agency won the brief after a competitive five-way pitch last year.

The exhibition, which tells the stories of soldiers and civilians captured as prisoners of war in conflicts in Europe and the Far East, opens on Saturday and will run until January 2010.

Sue Vanden, a director at Hemisphere, said the way the exhibition has been designed would bust myths of wartime incarceration conjured by classic war films.

“Most people’s idea of what life was like as a POW has come from iconic films such as The Great Escape and Bridge on the River Kwai,” Vanden said.

“With this, Imperial War Museum’s first ever major exhibition on the subject, we’ve set out to tell the story behind the myths, to get across the reality of what POWs experienced in captivity, from courage and comradeship through to hunger, deprivation and cruelty.”

Included in the exhibition's artefacts of art, documents, photos, and sound and film footage are drawings made by Ronald Searle during his time as a prisoner held by the Japanese, and a recreated 5m replica of a glider that prisoners at Colditz managed to build unnoticed in the castle's attic.

Younger visitors will be able to crawl through an escape tunnel, try on disguises, send secret messages and get a lesson in camp slang at interactive stations across the venue.