Impact Case Studies

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Horizon’s Wander Thoresby and Walk Calke projects exploit
web, cloud and mobile technologies to bring entertaining and
surprising experiences to visitors of city sites and country
parks. Current research is aimed at the Cultural and Creative
Industries, and involves relationships with the National Trust and
Nottingham City Council.
The research directly contributes to the development of an active
online platform: Wander Anywhere, which enables rapid prototyping
of locative media. Authors create web content and associate it to
geographic areas. Then, with the aid of a smart phone, mobile users
can explore the outdoors to track down and reveal this content,
experiencing it “on location”.
The platform also reveals the GPS traces left by users. Our research
has shown that these traces can provide valuable insight - revealing
user behaviour and infrastructural issues - for authors to iterate and
improve the design of the mobile experience.
The team has built a number of successful pilot experiences for
culture and heritage, one being at Thoresby Hall in Nottinghamshire.
The Thoresby Collection consists of 700 paintings, produced by
Countess Manvers, of the Thoresby Park Estate and the locality and
people who lived there. James Parkinson, the Thoresby Courtyard
Manager, was very engaged in the Wander Thoresby Project: “We
did have a permanent space where we could exhibit some of the
paintings but it wasn’t interpreted in the correct way and it certainly
wasn’t introducing visitors to Thoresby and the history of the
courtyard, of the family and of the wonderful estate. We have far
more stories than we could tell in the constraints of the space, so
we were looking at ways visitors could interact with the history and
the culture. The Wander Thoresby project was absolutely fabulous; it
started new initiatives from us about seeing our heritage as the way
forward and as the forefront of the visitor attraction……everyone
was engaged with it fully, different ages, different people.”
Other sites for experiences included Buxton Museum and Museo
Omero in Ancona, and the team is currently working with National
Trust sites in the East Midlands.
The platform is also being used to deliver hands-on training to
culture and heritage professionals. Previous classes delivered in
London (via Tate Britain) and Nottingham have demonstrated that
culture and heritage organisations are keen to adopt location-based
technologies for public engagement, and further classes have been
funded for 2015.
For further information, please contact:
Dr Ben Bedwell
Email:
Wander Anywhere: Locative media experiences in the wild
“The Wander Thoresby
project was absolutely
fabulous; it started new
initiatives from us about
seeing our heritage as
the way forward and as
the forefront of the visitor
attraction...”