Calvium has been working on location-based, digital innovation for heritage experiences for many years now. Our CEO, Jo Reid, actually took part in the world’s first geolocated drama, RIOT! 1831, back in 2004!

Digital technologies have changed almost beyond recognition since then… before the iPhone had even launched. They are more ubiquitous, sophisticated and powerful, which means the opportunity to tell stories, connect experts to the public and the public to places, has grown too.

Inspired by the wealth of great work happening in this area, we ran our first ‘Out of the Archives’ event earlier this year, showcasing how digital technologies are being harnessed to make specialist knowledge accessible and enhance public engagement with history and place.

The online event featured three award-winning council and university experts – Professor Fabrizio Nevola from the University of Exeter, Wiltshire Council’s Terry Bracher and Bristol City Council’s Pete Insole – who shared their knowledge, experiences and the impact of their work.

Below, we’ve rounded up the key takeaways from their presentations. We hope it leaves you feeling inspired by the innovative ways digital technologies are bringing the heritage of places to life.

History City: Interpreting urban history with digital technologies

Fabrizio Nevola is professor and chair of art history and visual culture at Exeter University, where he is also director of the Centre for Early Modern Studies. As an urban historian, Fabrizio is particularly interested in early modern public space in streets and how people use them. That means, rather than studying the history of architecture or the lives of individuals, he takes a broader cultural approach looking at the historical interactions between people, spaces and buildings.

Calvium has been collaborating with Professor Nevola for more than a decade now, exploring the potential of geolocation through apps for urban and public history. The first of these was the Hidden Florence app back in 2014, which Professor Nevola says really sparked his interest in digital humanities with a focus on interpretation: how to take information, data and source from the past and give them meaning. Interpretation, he believes, overlaps with storytelling, which is the fundamental “role of the art historian”.

Over time, Hidden Florence has evolved into a series of 10 History City apps, all accessible to the public. From Exeter to Hamburg to Copenhagen, the apps include first-person storytelling from historical characters that have been scripted by academics, and therefore have commentary from the “more objective interpretation” of historians and curators. This gives an opportunity to present multiple viewpoints, engaging with a wider range of issues and helping audiences relate more deeply with the stories, texts, buildings and artefacts of places. While it is a common approach in heritage – think of museum actors in period costumes –  adding a digital layer makes it more widely accessible as it can be used by anyone, for free, and in multiple languages. It can also bring objects ‘out of the museum’ and connect them to the places where they have meaning, while directing visitors to less visited sites. 

Another key feature of the apps is the ability to overlay historic maps on modern maps. History Cities has recently connected with Apple Maps so it is always available, which opens up opportunities to collaborate with different universities, places and audiences. Partnerships with academics, museums and heritage stakeholders has been key to the app’s success, supporting organic growth on a smaller budget (as is common in research!)

Additionally, the app is being used with students at Exeter and Venice as a means for local communities to engage with their city. University of Exeter’s internship scheme working with the Royal Albert Memorial Museum, for example, includes the Hidden Exeter app as part of the citizen consultation pop-up exhibition on the future of the high street. 

Nevola notes there are many similarities between the way people used places in the past and how they do now. One key difference, of course, is the use of smartphones. When developing History Cities, we wanted to make sure the apps allow people to experience their surroundings and the places they are in, rather than in a divorced digital world. As such, audio is the primary medium as it encourages people to look up rather than down, ultimately connecting people and place on a deeper level.

Explore Wiltshire: Using heritage to boost place engagement

Terry Bracher is heritage services manager at Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre (WSHC). Responsible for the district’s archives and outreach services (an impressive eight miles of shelves and boxes), he has been awarded a BEM (British Empire Medal) for services to heritage and public libraries in Wiltshire. WSHC has also been recognised as one of the top 10 services in the country under his leadership.

More recently, Terry oversaw the launch of the Explore Wiltshire app – part of a district-wide drive to engage new audiences in local heritage and cultural activities, increase visits and dwell time in local areas, and improve physical and mental wellbeing by supporting people to get active. The interactive location-aware app has amassed around 3,000 users since it launched last summer.

The app includes lots of archival content, most of which comes from WSHC. Key to the curation of the archives is finding stories that hook people first – for example pirate prisoners at Yelde Hall and an African Preacher at Tabernacle – and then give historical details of the relevant building.

Such buildings, monuments and location-based features are included in the app as ‘Sights’, which are the primary drivers of content with information, images and stories. Terry said basing trails and hunts on the sights helps to bring heritage to life in a fun way and boost engagement, while also enabling routes to be designed to take users past local shops and other places of interest.

Community engagement has been equally essential, with Terry noting the importance of encouraging local organisations and communities to develop it from the bottom up and add their own content. This is what helps to unearth stories that are unique to a place.

An additional benefit of the Explore Wiltshire app is that it gives market towns and parishes an opportunity to do some marketing about their area; when the app is downloaded, marketing messages can be added to ‘welcome’ slides. The landing page of the app also includes an audio intro by Time Team presenter and Wiltshire local, Phil Harding, which Terry said is a good hook to get people interested in Explore Wiltshire. 

Like History Cities, audio is a key facet of the app. Further emphasising the critical role of community engagement, Terry’s mission now is to get more local voices on there to share interesting insights about local areas.

Bristol City Council: Documenting the past to inform the future

Pete insole is the historic environment officer for Bristol City Council, where he works in the planning department. In his role he is particularly interested in managing the heritage of Bristol for future generations; having access to information from the archives, historic maps and archaeological reports, therefore, is key.

Know Your Place was developed about 13 years ago when trying to create a shared understanding of the story of Bristol City, using materials from the archives. The product was a website that allows people to explore local neighbourhoods through historic maps, images and linked information. There are many location-specific layers through which the map can be explored, including old town planning photographs, historic pubs and breweries, and aerial views of Bristol. A crowdsourcing component has also been added to the platform, enabling communities to upload their own archival content and stories of their neighbourhoods.

More recently, Bristol City Council has built ‘Story Maps’, which takes people through the content in a more narrative form. For Pete, tools like this are a great way to tell the story of change; not only of the physical fabric of houses and streets, but also of the people that lived there.

Know Your Place has not only been an important resource in terms of documenting heritage and supporting community engagement; it has also been a useful tool for documenting the regeneration of an area, allowing people to “take what is known about the past” to inform more appropriate and sustainable ways to change in future. Pete notes how Know Your Place is used in every planning application that comes into the department. It is another demonstration of the power and influence of community engagement; by adding to the map people are genuinely contributing to the future of the area.

A similar project was undertaken in Finland in 2016, where communities contributed to a ‘digital memory map’ of the area to highlight people’s place-based memories related to old buildings. Ultimately aiming to build cultural heritage in the area, the map was used to inform the city’s planning process.

Final thoughts

The examples in this article showcase only a handful of the brilliant ways digital innovation is being used to connect people with places, history and heritage.

Fundamentally, not only can digital technologies bring the past to life in increasingly engaging, accessible and sophisticated ways, they also have an instrumental role to play in enabling community engagement and informing the future strategies of our places.

With so much more to feel inspired by, we will be running our next Out of the Archives event on 25 April at 1pm, featuring experts from a Business Improvement District, Destination Marketing Organisation and district council. Register for free here.