Creative workshop exploring placed-based digital storytelling

21st September 2023

2 minute read

Jo Morrison

Director of Digital Innovation & Research

Digital Placemaking

Visitors will experience ghosts, fairy gardens and dragons as part of their Halloween adventures as they move around Windmill Hill City Farm’s old haunts!

The team at Windmill Hill City Farm (WHCF) teamed up with Calvium to imagine the first digital placemaking experience for the farm. It was a great day that started with a quick-fire exploration of the farm’s community, patterns of engagement with the venue and a demonstration of the Place Experience Platform – Calvium’s multi award-winning digital placemaking tool.

Opportunities for co-designing digital experiences with farm volunteers were discussed as well as ways to connect to the local arts community through the app.

Workshop with a woman in black fdress standing up at the fron tof a table and talking about a map that is on a stand at her side — Discussing potential stories and characterisations for a new digital visitor experience using AR.

The second session focused on digital storytelling. Everyone enjoyed imagining a wealth of ways in which visitors could experience the farm using a bespoke mobile app that will be delivered on the Place Experience Platform. Without giving away too much of the plot line, an AR ghost named Dusty will call on the help of visitors to the farm…

Female operating iMac — WHCF team creating content on the Place Experience Platform.

By the end of the workshop the WHCF team were already driving the platform and creating digital trails! “It’s all so intuitive, we were ready to feel confused, but it’s so great and really exciting!”

The next steps are to develop the story and create the content that will be uploaded to the platform.

Group of people who have worked on a project standing against a wall and smilling — Smiling as they have all agreed a set of actions!

Windmill Hill City Farm has been improving the health, wellbeing and life chances of local communities through education, recreation and therapy since 1976. Calvium has a newly established partnership with the City Farm and the digital placemaking activity is supported by Calvium as part of this relationship.

We recently interviewed its CEO, Steve Sayers about WHCF’s multiple roles in the neighbourhood, what good community engagement looks like and how digital technologies might impact people’s experiences of the farm in future.