In this one-hour online event, three award-winning council and university heritage experts discussed their pioneering use of mobile digital experiences.
Professor Fabrizio Nevola from the University of Exeter, Terry Bracher from Wiltshire Council, and Pete Insole from Bristol City Council together have decades of experience in using heritage, culture, and unseen archive materials and collections to engage visitors and local communities.
They describe their work and the impact it has made to their organisations and their communities, referring to the History City suite of apps, Explore Wiltshire, Know Your Place and StoryMaps.
These presentations primarily speak to those working in the public sector who have responsibility for tourism, economic development, heritage, culture, museums and archives, with a real focus on practical lessons.
Speaker biographies
Prof Fabrizio Nevola is Professor and Chair of Art History and Visual Culture at the University of Exeter, where he is also Director of the Centre for Early Modern Studies. He specialises in the urban and architectural history of Early Modern Italy, and his most recent research looks at the street as a social space, the urban iconography that often binds main streets into a coherent whole and the relations between public and private self-representation. On these topics he has published and edited numerous articles and books.
Terry Bracher is Heritage Services Manager at Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre. He has been awarded a BEM for services to Heritage and Public Libraries in Wiltshire. Under his leadership, WSHC has been recognised as one of the top ten services in the country. He oversees the eight miles of archives and a wide range of outreach services, and has been influential in developing local studies work focussing on recognising and celebrating diversity.
Pete Insole is Urban Design Team Manager in Bristol City Council’s Planning Department, and has nearly 30 years’ experience of working in heritage and place practices. He managed creation of Know Your Place, an award winning online resource, and has used it to develop a story of place concept that provides a platform for multiple voices to collectively share and define Bristol’s heritage through historic photos, oral histories, postcards and other formal and informal archives.
Additional resources
Prof Fabrizio Nevola – History City
- History City: brief introduction
- History City website
- History City’s co-founder David Rosenthal writes about storytelling with digital technologies
- In-depth project review: book from Routledge (free to download)
- Hidden Exeter. 5 min video
- History City apps are available free on Apple and Android – e.g. Hidden Florence (Apple), Hidden Exeter (Android)
Terry Bracher – Explore Wiltshire
- Review of Explore Wilshire in the Wiltshire Gazette and Herald
- Place Experience Platform case study of Explore Wiltshire
- Explore Wiltshire is free to download, for Apple and Android devices
- Historic videos from Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre on YouTube
Pete Insole – Know Your Place and StoryMaps
- Know Your Place, Bristol
- Story Maps: Bristol’s Lost Cinemas
- See more of Pete Insole’s work at Local Learning
Calvium resources
- Expert interviews and articles on digital technologies supporting storytelling, AR, boosting local economies, wayfinding and more, e.g.:
- How Stroud District Council have used digital placemaking to support their economic strategy
- Visit Ely’s experience with the Place Experience Platform
- Calvium offer a range of free downloadable resources to support effective digital placemaking, including Augmented Reality and Apps for Heritage