Already a finalist in Platform of the Year 2021, Calvium’s Place Experience Platform aims to be the premiere global digital placemaking product that fuses technical excellence with outstanding creative prowess. Now, thanks to the Creative Industries Council, these ambitions are much closer to being realised. On 21 September 2021, the UK Minister for the Digital and Creative Industries announced that Calvium’s Place Experience Platform has been selected as a winner of the esteemed CreaTech Ones to Watch 2021.
Digital placemaking for towns and cities
Digital placemaking enhances people’s relationships with locations and is an essential part of achieving the place strategies of our towns, cities and regions. Just look at the UK Government’s £3.6bn Towns Fund which is supporting the regeneration of 100 English towns – all of which will include digital engagement as a strategic priority. In addition, people’s use of digital technology and, critically, their expectations of tech to enable new types of interactions and relationships with places has grown massively. All of which sets the scene for the innovative Place Experience Platform – developed to improve visitor experiences and the local economies of towns and cities.
Place Experience Platform: fusing creativity and technology
The Place Experience Platform has been designed for towns and cities around the globe to connect with their visitors as never before. It is both an exciting visitor product – the Place Experience App, and a visitor management service – the Place Experience System.
The App attracts people to a destination, enables a unique experience when there and encourages repeat visits. And it does so by providing bespoke creative content about a location – combining wayfinding, storytelling and up-to-date information.
“As visitors engage with a destination through crafted content, expert storytelling and digital wayfinding, they discover less trodden paths, spend more time in a location and contribute to the wider local economy.”
Dr. Jo Morrison, Calvium
The content can be developed by a wealth of diverse creative practitioners from theatre, animation, sound design and more, or co-created using the combined imaginations of local communities. The platform provides opportunities for vital creative sector/technology collaborations and partnerships across industries and nations.
Using the Place Experience System, the creative content – text, audio, image, AR, can be quickly uploaded to the App by place managers – ready for visitors to experience. The system also enables a variety of trails to be plotted around a location to guide visitors.
Launched in 2020, several European cities, including London, Hamburg and Valencia, are already benefiting from the Place Experience Platform.
“This is awesome! Such an exciting example of 21st century placemaking and, even more importantly in the current climate, a brilliant tool for helping places inspire people to come and visit. Really cool stuff.”
Visitor feedback
Salisbury in Wiltshire harnessed the platform as part of the city’s long term recovery strategy that places the high street, culture and growth at its core.
“As part of Salisbury’s economic recovery plans, the Salisbury Trails App is a perfect way to share the heritage of Salisbury with visitors in compelling ways.”
Terry Bracher, Wiltshire Council
Digital placemaking for all
An original creative technology solution for driving place-based growth, fostering local identity and enabling new forms of location-based media, the Place Experience Platform is both an exciting visitor experience product and a visitor management system.
The platform operates at the intersection of creativity, technology and place. It provides creatives from design, animation, theatre and more, the new opportunity to make and upload original locative content that helps to expand and reshape people’s cultural experiences of destinations.
The Place Experience Platform delivers new opportunities for people and places to connect, on a global scale.