Garstang Digital Heritage Trail
& Cleveleys ARt Trail
Client: Wyre Council
Partners: Four Door Productions, TGANorth, TGAC
Start
Wyre Council successfully applied for Welcome Back Funding to develop two new location-based interactive trail experiences:
i) a new digital heritage trail in the beautiful market town of Garstang, and
ii) an AR art trail linked to The Sea Swallow story book, the Mythic Coast Trail, and a series of sculptures along the seafront at Cleveleys, created by Broadbent Studio.
this great adventure have been commissioned to develop these trails, working with our development partners, Four Door Productions, and a range of local partners on the ground in Garstang and Cleveleys.
Journey
For the Garstang trail, we’re working with local historian, Paul Smith, to get under the skin of this town and its character and explore some of its less well-known stories. Soon we’ll also be meeting with people from Dewlay, a traditional local cheesemaker, as well as the town’s female Town Crier, who might be working up a new Cry for the trail.
Cleveleys War Memorial
For the Cleveleys AR trail, we’ve been speaking with Stephen Broadbent, creator of the seafront sculptures, and will be working with artist Hannah Megee, to transform the original story book and artworks into interactive 3D media and AR art pieces.
Recently, we re-read the story and walk along the sculpture trail route at Cleveleys, scanning the sculptures using LiDAR and Photogrammetry to create versatile 3D digital models that will form a key part of the AR artworks and trail experience.
Amazingly, The Sea Swallow was conceived as an ‘open source’ project and every element of it was intentionally placed under a creative commons license to enable anyone to take it on a develop it in new ways. Based on extensive consultation with the local community, the story is designed ‘with holes in it’ – opportunities for people to create spin off works or to extend the story in new directions.
In Garstang, Paul got the history bug early in his teens and spent many years finding and speaking with the older residents of the town to collect their memories. Though many have since passed away, their stories live on as Paul weaves them into his guided tours around the town, and we’re hoping to capture some of this magic for the new digital heritage trail.
Destination
A brand new way to explore and learn about the historic market town of Garstang using your own smartphones, and a new AR art trail experience that you’ll be able to download for free to for iOS and Android devices.
The new Garstang Heritage Digital Trail will be published using our on trail authoring and publishing platform, C-I, as part of the next instalment of the wider Discover Wyre Trails project.
A key element of the Garstang trail will be inviting audiences to ‘Get Involved’ in a range of ways, from planning another trip to attend some of the range of events and festivals held in the town, to signing up for art classes at the popular Arts Centre and more.
The Cleveleys AR Art trail will include some original artworks being created by Hannah Megee, and will be hosted on the same AR app platform that we’ve created for Wyre Council, and used previously to publish the Fleetwood Festive Trail experience, for Christmas 2021.
The heart of this project is emotional, linking with the lived experiences of local residents and reflecting their relationship with the sea they live by. This has not always been positive, as many ships have been wrecked and lives lost. A key challenge for this project is to treat these experiences and voices with respect, and communicating the sense of loss and hurt alongside the beauty and the joy elicited by these stunning surroundings.
