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AHRC Connected Communities Heritage Network
Symposium Proceedings 2016
Based on the AHRC Connected Communities Heritage Network
Symposium held at University of Lincoln on January 14th-15th 2016
Chief Editor: Nick Higgett, Associate Professor Digital Design
De Montfort University
Assisstant Editor: Nuntamon Kutalad, De Montfort University
Review Committee: Nick Higgett, De Montfort University
Dr Emily Baines, De Montfort University
Dr Philip Riden, University of Nottingham
Published by the Connected Communities Heritage Network
www.hertitagenetwork.dmu.ac.uk
Email: Nick Higgett at [email protected]
2
CONTENTS
Page
1. A VIEW FROM THE OTHER SIDE: “WEST ENDSTORIES” A CASE STUDY OF CO-PRODUCTION 3
Green J
2. CIRCULAR STORYTELLING: REIMAGINING STORIES AS
A MEANS OF DOING COMMUNITY HISTORIES 9
Ravenscroft N et al
3. “A CRACK IN TIME 2015” – IMMERSIVE LEARNING THROUGH
PERFORMANCE IN MUSEUM & HERITAGE SETTINGS 14
Rumney P et Scriven N
4. INVESTIGATING THE IMPACT OF MOBILE PHONE APPS ON
THE EMOTIONAL REACTION AND ENGAGEMENT OF
VISITORS TO THE CULTURAL QUARTER, LEICESTER 21
Wilkinson J
3
A VIEW FROM THE OTHER SIDE: “WEST
ENDSTORIES” A CASE STUDY OF CO-PRODUCTION
Judith Green St James’ Heritage and Environment
Group
Newcastle upon Tyne,
Tyne and Wear, UK
Email:[email protected]
ABSTRACT This paper presents a case study of co-production from the
perspective of a small community- based organization 1
which was one of three partners in the project alongside an
academic institution and a city museum and archives service.
“West End Stories” is based in the multiply deprived
community of Benwell in Newcastle upon Tyne and is part
of a larger community- university research project called
Imagine North East. The “West End Stories” project uses
objects to tell stories about the local area and its changing
community, developing from a museum- based exhibition
into a series of outreach exhibitions across local community
venues, and thence into a permanent online exhibition. The
paper describes the benefits and problems encountered,
arguing that the strength of the “West End Stories” project is
largely attributable to the fact that it grew out of a pre-
existing working relationship between the museum and the
community organisation which had created a partnership of
trust and mutual respect. The university’s facilitating and
supportive role is identified as a key factor in its success.
Keywords: Co-production, Benwell,
INTRODUCTION
In recent years, there has been a growth of interest in ideas
of co- production within a number of areas of academic
inquiry, notably social, heritage and cultural studies, fuelled
by funding available from sources such as the Connected
Communities programme for work carried out in partnership
with external organisations. The notion of co-production is
1 The author was a participant in a Connected Communities project
– Imagine – Connecting communities through research, funded by
the Economic and Social Research Council, Grant Reference
ES/K002686/1. 2 Durose,C., Beebeejaun, Y., Rees,J., Richardson,J. And
Richardson,L. (2011) Towards Co-Production in Research with
Communities.Swindon: AHRC.
deceptively simple but in practice, as with community
development with which it shares common roots, it is not just
a technical method of working but can have varying
objectives and impacts depending on the values and aims of
the participants.23
In consequence, despite the rhetoric of equal partnerships, there can at times be a mismatch between theory and
practice. 4 Organisations working at the community level
have found themselves often in demand as “partners” in
diverse projects led by local universities aiming to engage them in researching a particular topic, in creating an
exhibition or event, or improving their skills in some way. At
the end of the particular project the academics go away
armed with material for use in publications and conference presentations, and hopefully a valuable contribution to
knowledge is achieved along the way. For the community
partners the benefits are variable. There are undoubtedly
good examples where the experience of coworking can be
positive, bringing enjoyment, opportunities for learning and
acquiring new skills, and valuable resources. In contrast there
are cases where involvement in such a project has had a
detrimental effect on the local organisation by undermining
its own work through belittling its skills and knowledge,
frightening off volunteers with excessive demands or off-putting specialist language, or diverting the organization
from its core work with consequent loss to the community,
while meanwhile promises made at the outset of the
partnership remain unfulfilled. Somewhere in-between there
are many examples of projects where both partners gain
some benefit, although this is not always within a framework
of mutual understanding and agreement about the overall
mission. As one key participant in a recent community-university research partnership project responded to an
evaluation question asking what benefits he had obtained
from working with a local university for two years:
3 Meade,R., Shaw,M. and Banks,S. (2016) Politics, Power and
Community Development. Bristol: Policy Press. 4 Gilchrist, P., Holmes,C., Lee,A., Moore,N. and Ravenscroft,N. (2015) eprints.brighton.ac.uk.
4
‘Mild amusement and bafflement. I haven’t an idea what they
got out of this whole exercise’.
This paper describes “West End Stories”, a case study of
coproduction in progress, which embodies a model that is more akin to a “mixed economy” model without necessarily
the implicit assumption of consensus which is arguably the
holy grail of co-production.
THE PARTNERS “West End Stories” is the co- product of a three- way
partnership, supported by Connected Communities as part of
a larger ESRC- funded research project called “Imagine”
looking at civic participation and involving multiple
universities and community partners across the UK. The
academic partner for “West End Stories” is Durham
University’s Centre for Social Justice and Community
Action, responsible for coordinating the “Imagine North
East” strand of the programme. 5 The university research
team had identified the west end of Newcastle - an area with
a long history of social deprivation and community action - as a site for a research project, part of which would involve
investigating how local communities understand and
evaluate their history and imagine their future. The Centre
had a pre- existing commitment to the co- production of
research in a way that does not privilege one type of
knowledge over another, as well as a belief in the importance
of building on existing relationships.6 During the planning
phase of the project, following discussions with a number of
key informants working within the community, they
recognised that this area already had a strong and vibrant community and voluntary sector infrastructure and agreed to
build on this by engaging as community partners seven
diverse community-based organisations in addition to
Newcastle’s museums and archives service. This was not the
easiest route to have taken from a management and
coordination point of view but it worked in practice because
the organisations involved were well established and well
networked and shared a culture of practical partnership
working across the area. Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums service ( TWAM) was identified as a community partner at the outset. TWAM
serves the geographical area of the former Tyne and Wear County Council, and operates seven museums and art
galleries and two Roman forts as well as the county archives
service.7 Whilst the specific project that TWAM was to work
on as part of Imagine North East had the support of senior management, the role of actually working on it was
5 https://www.dur.ac.uk/beacon/socialjustice/imagine/ 6 Centre for Social Justice and Community Action, Durham
University (2011) Community-based Participatory Research: Ethical Challenge. https://www.dur.ac.uk/beacon/socialjustice/researchprojects/cbpr/ 7 https://twmuseums.org.uk
delegated to the small outreach team based at Newcastle’s
Discovery Museum. This was fortuitous as the outreach team
had already forged effective working relationships with
some of the west end organisations, notably the St James’
Heritage and Environment Group. St James’ Heritage and Environment Group is a wholly
volunteer-run community-based organisation. This makes it,
while not unique, at least atypical in the environment of
formal research partnerships where the status of a “community partner” may be given to any external
organisation that is not an academic institution. While
accepting that the term “community” is notoriously slippery,
it could fairly be argued that the Heritage and Environment
Group is nearer the real thing than many partners. The Group
became a heritage organisation almost by accident, having
started off as an informal collection of local residents and
volunteers who came together to clear up and map the
historic graveyard of St James’ in Benwell. They came to
realise that the graveyard encapsulated the story of the West
Newcastle communities over almost two centuries during
which the area was transformed from a largely rural area housing some of the most powerful and wealthy families in
the region. In the second half of the 19th century the rapid
development of heavy industry along the riverside turned it
into an industrial powerhouse, home to one of the world’s leading armaments manufacturers among others, and
concomitantly thousands of homes were built for the
workers who flooded in to staff not only the local industries
but also the commercial development of the booming town
of Newcastle. By the late 20th century however it had become
a classic post- industrial area, experiencing multiple social
and economic deprivation and attracting the attentions of
almost every major national “urban”, “inner city” and “regeneration” initiative designed to halt its decline and
stimulate a new era of local prosperity8. Currently the area is
undergoing major physical transformation following the
demolition of large areas of housing and the beginning of a
long-term programme of redevelopment, although at present
this mainly manifests itself in the form of empty sites
signaling what has been lost9 rather than a vision for the
future. The Heritage and Environment Group’s aim is to encourage
people to explore and celebrate the history of the area. As
well as continuing to maintain and improve the graveyard,
the Group runs projects, mounts exhibitions, produces publications and offers activities and resources for people of
all ages.10 As the physical landscape of its history is stripped
away from the community, it becomes more vital than ever
to preserve and share this history in as many other ways as
8 Benwell Community Project (1981) West Newcastle in Growth
and Decline. Newcastle upon Tyne: Benwell Community Project
9 Imagining Benwell: Past, Present and Future (2015). Centre for
Social Justice and Community Action, Durham University, UK. 10 http://stjameschurchnewcastle.wordpress.
5
possible. Melvyn Bragg has recently described museums as
“our national memories”11: the Heritage and Environment
Group’s role is, in partnership with others, to be the local
memory of the west end community. Beyond this, the
Group’s work can be seen as an example of action-research,
using heritage as a means of exploring issues of identity and supporting community activism in an area ravaged by
economic and social change.12
ORIGINS OF “WEST END STORIES” One significant difference between many projects led by academic or heritage institutions projects and those
underpinned by a community development approach is that
the latter tend to have a pre- history and a continuing but
unpredictable future life, and therefore can be more rooted in and responsive to the local community.13
This is not a
criticism of academia or museums: it is merely a
consequence of the fact that funding often comes in one-off
slabs of money for clearly defined projects with pre-determined outcomes and fixed timescales. However it is
important that the institutions who hold the money and status
recognise that such community partners bring added value in
terms of local expertise and knowledge, as well as a network
of relationships and connections, and also that they have their own agendas and needs which cannot simply be
subsumed under the requirements of an external organisation
with a different culture and priorities. “West End Stories” has been an evolving project which has
gone through several major phases, able to respond flexibly
to local interest and need rather without having to abide by a
predefined plan with specified outputs laid down at the
outset. It initially came out of an ongoing working
relationship between the Heritage and Environment Group
and TWAM, a relationship which has been developed and
maintained over several years and reflects sustained and frequently difficult efforts to negotiate ways of
accommodating the diverse priorities and interests of the
institution and the community within a coherent framework
of planning and delivering effective projects. Despite the
inequalities in prestige, power and resources of the two
partners, this can fairly lay claim to being a genuinely equal
partnership. The process is described from the perspective of
the TWAM outreach team: ‘When we set out in 2012 to meet people and
groups in the west end, we slowly realised that we
( Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums) need the
“community” more than they need us. We wanted
to create long term, genuine partnerships, built on
1121.2.16 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes 12
Smith,L., Shackel,P. and Campbell,G. (2011) Heritage, Labour
and the Working Classes. Abingdon: Routledge. 13 Green,J.(2016 forthcoming) ‘Bringing it Back Home: Community- Driven Engagement with Heritage in the West End of
Newcastle upon Tyne’ in Social History in Museums, 40, pp. 47-56.
understanding and respect, that would be mutually
beneficial to all parties. The plan wasn't set down
by a “top down” agenda and a big budget with a
short term aims. We had a window of opportunity
in the light of funding changes and cuts to create
something that would be useful and have real value to the delicate community networks in the
West End. What has evolved from the process now
forms the basis of our community exhibition
programme. The projects and partnerships are
ongoing and, from these, greater links and
partnerships have been made with the museum.’14
For the Heritage and Environment Group, the initial phases of the relationship were governed by caution and suspicion,
informed by previous bad experiences: ‘We’ve had years of external organisations
parachuting into the area with their resources and
connections and top-down plans, and trampling all
over the local organisations that have been
working away for years in the face of so many
difficulties and doing the same sort of work but without attracting the same publicity and
attention.’15
Despite this, the Group was always willing to try out new
possibilities that might benefit the local community. The
working relationship with TWAM started with a number of
modest joint activities aimed at pooling their separate
strengths and resources for mutual benefit. A series of
successful study visits for local residents to explore TWAM’s collections were followed by a joint oral history
project which built on an existing exhibition mounted in
Benwell by the Heritage and Environment Group. The Group
provided the contacts and background information and the local venue, the task of interviewing participants was shared
between the two organisations, and TWAM edited the
material and provided sound equipment so that visitors could
listen to the interviews. These and other experiences over a
period of time persuaded the Heritage and Environment
Group that TWAM was interested in building a long- term
supportive working relationship with local groups,
responding to local needs and interests rather than imposing their own expert ideas, in contrast to earlier experiences of
partnerships with large institutions where communities are
invited to participate in large externally funded projects with
a walk- on part in order to tick the box of ‘community
participation’ and feature colourfully on PowerPoint
presentations at conferences.
The next significant step was the decision to mount a major
14 Written statement by Michael McHugh (Assistant Outreach
Officer,Community Exhibition Programme, Tyne and Wear
Archives and Museums) produced for presentation at Connected
Communities Conference, 2016. 15 Interview with St James’ Heritage & Environment Group
volunteers, 2015.
6
joint exhibition. A number of ideas were debated. New digital
platforms were appearing on the scene at this time, and there
was discussion of creating an interactive digital experience. In the event, the inspiration for “West End Stories” was the
British Museum and Radio 4 series “The World in 100
Objects”. This prompted the idea of a much simpler model - mounting an exhibition of the history of the west end which
would eschew overviews, timelines and expert
interpretation, and would comprise a variety of objects,
images and voices that in some way told a story about the
area. The idea of wrapping the exhibition in an imposed
narrative about the development and decline of the west end
was rejected, among other reasons, because the more recent
history of the area, with large-scale demolition and ambitious
but barely realised regeneration plans, has involved some
measure of painful division and conflict within local
communities and the stories told to interpret these events are
still contested. The task of healing divisions was ongoing,
and it was recognised that the museum needed to be sensitive
to the fact that even a casual phrase could be potentially
damaging to fragile community relationships. It was decided
that in “West End Stories” the objects, images and voices would speak for themselves, and interpretation would take
place through a process of interaction rather than a fixed
“expert” view. “West End Stories” was on display at the People’s Gallery
in the Discovery Museum in Newcastle for several months
during 2013. It comprised an eclectic range of objects linked
to the west end, some of which came from the collections held by TWAM’s museums, galleries and archives, and the
rest were contributed by people and groups from the local
communities. They ranged from priceless wood carvings and
Roman artefacts to a hand-knitted tower block.16 “West End
Stories” in the museum was a genuinely joint exhibition, its contents planned by the two organisations, although all the
technical curation tasks of preparing exhibits and creating
displays were carried out by TWAM Alongside the
exhibition, TWAM ran a varied programme of public events and activities to bring people in to the museum and get them
talking to each other and to the organisers, including a talk
and debate about the experience of regeneration in the west
end.
“WEST END STORIES IN THE COMMUNITY” Even before the official launch had taken place, the process
of planning and preparing the exhibition in the museum had
prompted further discussions about future developments, the conclusion of which was that the next move should be to take
16 Ord,J. (2013) ‘Many Stories: One West End: A suburb in the
spotlight at Newcastle’s Discovery Museum’ in Social History in
Museums, Vol 37, pp. 78-80. 17 Watson, S. (2007) ‘History museums, community identities and a
sense of place: rewriting histories’, in Knell, S., MacLeod, S. And
“West End Stories” out of the museum and into the
community. The outreach team had undertaken a search of
the collections housed in their various museums, archives
and galleries in order to identify material connected to the
west end. The search revealed a large number of objects and
documents, most of which had never been on display and whose existence was often hidden behind TWAM’s
complicated cataloguing system. The outreach team felt
strongly that such material should be shared with the
communities to whose history it relates, rather than kept out
of sight in locked basements. They were also aware that the
socio- economic characteristics of the west end, which
includes some of the most deprived neighbourhoods in the
country, mean that most residents are not consumers of
heritage in traditional ways such as visiting museums.
These concerns accorded with the Heritage and Environment
Group’s aim of “doing heritage” within the community and trying to integrate it into everyday life rather than making it
a specialised activity. Thus “West End Stories in the
Community” was devised as a follow- up to “West End
Stories” in the museum. The plan was to take small-scale and
roving exhibitions around public and community venues across the area, with different venues displaying different
exhibitions simultaneously, and the contents of each
changing from time to time. The contents included items
from the previous exhibition in the museum with the addition of a considerable amount of new material. Again this
comprised objects from the TWAM collections, including a
variety of products manufactured on West Newcastle’s once
thriving riverside industrial area, and objects contributed by
local residents and group. This time however the locally
sourced material comprised the greater proportion of the
exhibits. There is considerable evidence of the value, both to
the growth of heritage knowledge and for the participants
themselves, of facilitating people to tell their own stories.1718
Collecting objects locally of personal or community
significance, together with the stories attached to them,
offered a means of doing this. An important part of the
project therefore was a process of appealing, mainly by word
of mouth and personal contact, for people to loan or donate
objects that in some way told a story about the area’s history. These voluntary contributions were supplemented by focused efforts by the Group’s volunteers to find objects to
illustrate particular aspects of that history (such as a stone
furtively removed from the remains of a boundary wall of a
former grand mansion) . One of the lessons learnt was that
objects do not have to be intrinsically interesting or attractive
to tell an interesting and important story about specific local
places and people or to be salient to a community’s sense of
identity today. For a local audience with their personal
memories and nexus of relationships, it is often the
Watson, S. (eds) Museum Revolutions, London: Routledge, pp. 160- 172. 18 Crooke, E. (2012) ‘Community biographies: character, rationale
and significance’, in Museums and Biographies (eds Hill, K.). Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, pp. 307-318.
7
individual and family stories evoked by objects that matters
rather than their wider historical or artistic interest. A cobble
from the pavements of the Lower Scotswood Estate, now
completely demolished but home to many thousands of
people over the years. A piece of coal from the coal seam
next to the last pit to be closed in Benwell, revealed by chance for a few weeks in 2013 during the building of some
new bungalows. A membership card for allotments created
during the First World War to help feed the home population,
disappearing 50 years later as part of a mass slum clearance
programme. A school tie and cap belonging to a former pupil
of a secondary school closed in the 1960s as part of the move
to comprehensive education in the city. An old record book
belonging to a tenants association serving one of the city’s oldest council estates, built in the aftermath of the First
World War to provide homes fit for heroes. All of these
objects evoked memories for thousands of current and
former residents and, by illustrating specific elements of the changes experienced by individuals, described a wider
historical process without any need to lecture or interpret . The information provided next to each object comprised a
short explanation of what it was, its location and context, and the link with particular people if that object was part of their
personal story. Again there was a programme of activities
and events running alongside the first year of the exhibition
in order to stimulate discussion locally and provide opportunities for interactive learning and sharing memories
and experiences.
“West End Stories in the Community” has been displayed in five venues – the parish church, the shopfront of a
community project in the main shopping street and three
local libraries – and is still in progress. It has enabled many
thousands of people who are not normally consumers of
heritage to “do heritage” as part of their daily life, while shopping, paying their council tax or changing a library
book, rather than requiring a special visit to a museum. Taking the museum out into the community was such a
simple idea, but it would be misleading not to mention some
of the practical difficulties encountered along the way. The
practicalities of locating exhibitions in community venues
produced a range of new challenges over the course of the
project. Museums and galleries offer a relatively stable and
predictable environment for mounting exhibitions, but this is
not necessarily the case out in communities. The dominant
culture of museums and archives is understandably
concerned with the preservation and security of objects. This
meant that potential venues had to be checked for humidity
and temperature, security arrangements vetted and insurance
organised. In some cases objects were deemed too valuable
to be allowed outside the museum. The logistics of delivering
and installing museum objects can be difficult, requiring as
it does the use of specialist movers and confronting access
arrangements not designed for museum display cases . Sharing a space with other users with different needs and
priorities, while offering significant benefits in terms of accessing new audiences, created many unforeseen practical
problems requiring delicate negotiation to resolve. Even the
libraries proved problematic as two of the three local
libraries temporarily closed as a result of public expenditure cuts and later reopened following conversion to dual use
facilities, necessitating urgent removal of the exhibitions and
later partial reinstallation, causing havoc to the carefully
planned timetable. To their credit the museum staff have embraced this experience as a valuable learning opportunity
that would contribute to improving their practice within the
community.
“WEST END STORIES”: THE MOVIE
Durham University’s involvement with the “West End
Stories” project began in 2013 when the university was developing the detailed proposal for the “Imagine”
Connected Communities project together with a consortium
of academic and community partners. TWAM had already
been identified as a community partner for the Imagine North East strand of work which would focus on the
historical dimensions of civic engagement. The university’s
Centre for Social Justice and Community Action already had
a track record of working with diverse community partners across the region, and also had expertise in the field of
community development. The research team was therefore
predisposed to be sympathetic to a model of identifying and
working with community partners that recognised the importance of acknowledging the existing community and
voluntary sector relationships that obtained in particular
areas and the benefits to both researchers and community
partners of building on existing work within communities rather than parachuting into an area with a supposedly
innovative project that replicates and potentially undermines
the work of small community- based organisations. The
TWAM outreach team, for their part, were keen to use their involvement in Imagine to develop and extend their
partnership work in the west end. The outcome of a detailed
process of negotiation was a proposal that TWAM, in
addition to offering general support and resources to the
other Imagine North East community partners including access to TWAM’s collections and practical advice on
mounting exhibitions, would work with the Heritage and
Environment Group to produce digital versions of the
objects already collected for the “West End Stories” project . A “West End Stories” website would be created initially to
house this collection of images of objects relating to the west
end, together with photographic images, maps and stories
that would provide a local context for each object. This
website could be added to by the partner organisations on an
ongoing basis after the end of the two-year Imagine North
East project and would represent a legacy of partnership
working in practice. In the words of the Imagine North East
coordinator, Professor Sarah Banks of Durham University’s
Centre for Social Justice and Community Action: ‘I think the combination of the Heritage
and Environment Group and TWAM as an already existing partnership was a
huge asset to Imagine NE – developing
the understanding of university partners
and people from other community organisations about the importance of
8
heritage for communities and the role of local groups in documenting and
reclaiming the past – particularly the
lives of ordinary people.’19
The “West End Stories” website will always be a work in
progress. It is not in fact a movie but a set of images. The
principles behind the website are similar to the community
exhibitions: namely, to make available to a wider audience a
range of objects and other material relating to the west end within TWAM’s collections that generally was difficult to
access, to exhibit items contributed by past and present
residents that linked with people’s personal stories, to be
image- led but provide accompanying contextualizing
information such as map extracts and archive photographs,
and to facilitate sharing of information and debate about the
area’s history without seeking to impose an over- arching
narrative. As with the community exhibitions, the practical
process of creating the website has been a genuinely joint
exercise. TWAM chose to use the technical and design
expertise within its outreach team rather than bringing in
website design specialists for the project. This meant that the
process of creating the website was informed as much by an
understanding of the practice of heritage learning and the
priorities and needs of the community as by technical and
design issues. It enabled the Group to be involved throughout
in discussions about design and content on an equal basis,
trusting that the outreach team were genuinely listening and
wanting to achieve an agreed outcome without the suspicion
that they were being blinded by technical jargon. This has
strengthened the final product although the process has not
been without dissension and difficulties, reflecting the desire
to accommodate the needs of all partners with their often
differing cultures and priorities.
CONCLUSION This paper has described one case study of co-production
between three partners from different sectors of the heritage
and research world: a university, a museum and archives
institution, and a community partner from the cheapest and
least professionalised end of the community and voluntary
sector. This example has not been put forward as a particular
model of good practice for others to follow, but it does
illustrate some characteristics of what we would regard as
one successful model of co-production. Perhaps chief among these is the recognition by the more
powerful partners that, as Raphael Samuel has put it, history
is an activity rather than a profession20, with the associated
willingness to abandon the assumption of a hierarchy of
research and knowledge in the field of heritage. Linked to
this is the recognition by the more powerful partners that
they can learn from the process of co-production in ways that
influence their core practice, and a genuine commitment to
changing entrenched assumptions and taking risks.
Just as significant is the importance of building long- term
relationships of trust, honesty and mutual respect as a basis
for genuinely equal working partnerships. This is difficult to
achieve in a period of diminishing resources when funding
is much more readily available for short- term, one- off
projects rather than sustained collaborations and core work. It is not, however, necessarily expensive and it is an
investment that repays generously over the longer term.
Another key feature in the success of this partnership is the
awareness of the social and political context of heritage work
in specific localities. This is partly about understanding that
historical knowledge is not neutral in its impact, in the sense
that the facts that are presented and the stories told about
particular geographical areas and their communities can influence in important ways how people think about the
options open to them to accept or change their situations. It is also about being aware of the complex and fragile
character of local community infrastructures, especially in poorer areas subject to major social and economic changes,
and being sensitive to the risks of damaging these by careless
or unthinking actions.
It is not accidental that, despite the fact that Imagine North
East is a university- led partnership, this case study has said
little about the role of the university in the West End Stories
project. This reflects the way in which the university has
given all its community partners considerable autonomy in running their projects within an initially agreed framework,
producing a patchwork of varied projects designed to
illuminate different aspects of the core research questions . The university’s role throughout the “West End Stories”
project has been to facilitate rather than manage or monitor. It has been flexible and pragmatic in its approach,
recognising the value of learning through trial and error and
leaving space for debate and dissension rather than trying to impose a consensus which would owe more to convenience
than reality.
Underpinning the development of “West End Stories” has been a recognition that academic institutions do not have a
monopoly of research expertise and knowledge. The working
relationship between the three partners has been developed
and strengthened over the two years of the Imagine North East research project by ongoing informal reporting and
discussion as well as through the formal meetings of all
community partners. At the heart of the process has been the
relationship of trust that has been formed – a relationship
based on the ability to co-work on a joint project without any
of the partners sacrificing their own priorities and needs in
the interests of an assumed consensus which in reality is
often defined and imposed by the most powerful partner.
19 Private communication 20 Samuel, R. (2012) Theatres of Memory: Past and Present in
Contemporary Culture. London: Verso.
9
CIRCULAR STORYTELLING: REIMAGINING STORIES
AS A MEANS OF DOING COMMUNITY HISTORIES
Abstract
Storytelling, and oral histories more generally, have been
widely used as a means of understanding communities and
their (often multiple) heritages. However, few conventional
projects approach difficult questions about who sets the
agenda, who is - and is not - present, and who ‘owns’ the
outputs. As a result, many communities become
disenfranchised from their own histories. The Collaborative
Stories Spiral (CSS) offers the potential for a new ‘circular’
approach, based on a recursive process of situating,
generating, analysing and remediating stories. The idea of
circularity reflects the multiple movements and
transformations of data and outputs that happen when stories
are told and retold, particularly once community stories are
remediated in a range of forms. This is very much a work in
progress, with some pilot data from an earlier AHRC
Connected Communities Programme grant used to offer
insights into the potential of the CSS to foster ‘interpretative
flexibility’ in the way that stories are generated and used.
Introduction
Since the inception of the AHRC’s Connected Communities
Programme, many researchers have sought to address two
fundamental questions: how can we develop and undertake
a genuinely co- co- operative and co- designed approach to
community research and data generation; and to what extent
might such an approach allow us to rework conventional
academic/community practice boundaries? The focus of our
attention to these questions has reflected the four themes of
community research identified by Mah and Crow ( 2011) -
connection, difference, boundaries and development - in an
experience of communities as dynamic, porous and
contingent learning environments. For us, there is little to be
gained by conceptualising community as a singular or fixed
referent that can be researched, but instead viewing
communities as complex, fluid and evolving phenomena that
can be engaged in a reflexive learning process. In addressing
these questions, therefore, we have worked with co-
production ( Gilchrist, et al, 2015) within a broader
participatory turn ( Jasanoff, 2004) , through which it has
become clear to us that to be engaged in participatory
research is already to be entangled in a series of knots and
chains of complicated histories and their contemporary
manifestations – including now participatory practice and
research.
This conjunction is important to us, for it reflects the
potential for co- designed research practice at the
convergence between community- based facilitation
practice( s) and an academy that is faced with the challenge
of finding new methodologies that address contemporary
society. In this context we understand co- production as a
methodological stance that seeks user involvement in stages
of a design process and draws upon the principle that users
become active in the creative development of a product by
interacting directly with design and research teams. It thus
foregrounds the creative capacities of participants as experts
of their own experiences and, in this case, also skills drawn
from the fields of facilitation and youth work. This focussed
reworking of boundaries reframes questions of power that
operate in an ‘information commons’ (Bruns, 2008), calling
attention to how interests are promoted through collaborative
interaction, how knowledge is generated and used amongst
participants, and how contributions can be coordinated and
integrated.
Neil Ravenscroft and Paul Gilchrist (University of Brighton) Becky Taylor (University of Brighton and Plumpton College)
Niamh Moore (University of Edinburgh) Claire Holmes and Amelia Lee (LGBT Youth North West)
Contact: Prof Neil Ravenscroft
School of Environment & Technology
University of Brighton,
Cockcroft, Lewes Road,
Brighton BN2 4GJ
Email:
10
Co-design Process
In working with this conceptualisation through a series of co-
created and facilitated workshops and training programmes,
we brought the ICA_UK’s Technology of Participation into
conversation with conventional academic approaches to
participatory research. We sought, through this process, to
inhabit simultaneously the worlds of practice, reflection,
outcomes and action, as a process through which we could
co- design our approach to community- based participatory
research. Informed by Bruns’ ( 2008: 26) notion of “fluid
heterarchy, ad hoc meritocracy”, the workshops exposed the
epistemological premise(s) of co-designed research, helping
us to confront and address relations of social power between
stakeholders. This process led to the co-design of protocols
of interaction, a sharing of information, knowledge resources
and skills, and a re-emphasis upon the need for collaborative
activity to be of use to the diverse communities in which we
operate. This has emerged from and reinforced a sense of
dynamism in community interactions, although this has also
at times been bounded by the ways in which authority
adheres to particular ideas and people.
Star’s (2010: 602) concept of a “boundary object” has been
useful for articulating our project. For Star, a boundary
object is not so much an edge or border, but rather a ‘shared
space’ that coheres through a collaborative effort involving
sharing and transfer of knowledge and skills. Boundary
objects are structures for doing things together which, like
road maps, may point in directions and lead to different ends,
involving interpretative flexibility which gives scope for
individuals to determine directions based upon use and
interpretation. Crucially boundary objects allow
collaboration without the need for consensus. Boundary
objects require standardisations and infrastructures, which
are often methodologies. Our infrastructure is a co-designed
multi- method model for conceptualising the generation of
data about personal and community histories and
associations ( we have called this the Collaborative Stories
Spiral – CSS - see Figure 1) . Following de Laet and Mol
( 2000) , the materiality of the CSS derives from action, as
well as further interactions between partners, while also
carrying an anticipation of ‘configurational variance’ and
adaptation to local contexts.
The CSS can be read in any direction, but starting at the top
left, the act of situating stories concerns the spatial and
temporal contexts of those involved. It thus bridges the
historical practices of unearthing contingent social, political,
economic and technological complexities of context, and a
prefigurative interpretive stage of recognising the meanings
of peoples’ everyday lives. As it suggests, the next stage
concerns the social and participatory activity of generating
stories. Of course, this activity requires sensitivity to the
power of different media and roles, which has serious
impacts on what it is possible to tell (Gilchrist, et al, 2015) .
Once stories have been generated, there is a reflexive phase
where a story begins to be mediated within a community,
allowing for revisions to the narrative as events are
discussed. Finally, once a settled narrative has been
achieved, the story is often remediated as new biographic
and historic materials are produced; as Gilchrist, et al, (2015: p. 465) assert, “… it is during this phase that the model is
realised as a creative tool for expressing distinct and
recognisable narratives and histories about communities,
their participants and ongoing networks and relationships.”
Figure 1: The Collaborative Stories Spiral (from Gilchrist, et
al, 2015)
Remediating community stories: work in
progress
In developing the CSS we undertook a pilot study that used
some stories that had been situated, generated and, to some
extent, mediated in a food community in the UK, and asked
a community of heritage scholars and professionals in the
Netherlands to undertake an exercise in remediating the
stories for a new, non-specialist, audience. The stories took
shape at a community farm in southern England, through a
series of events organised collaboratively between the
community and the researchers. The community’s purpose
was to revisit its history to reconnect with the impulses that
had led to its formation and, in the process, to celebrate those
who had been instrumental in guiding the farm to its current
configuration (see Ravenscroft, et al, 2102). The community
in the Netherlands had been brought together through the EU
project Francia Media, Cradles of European Culture
(Vicelja-Matijašić, 2015), and wanted new insights into how
to understand the remediation of stories that they were
addressing in their work. The workshop took place in
Amsterdam in May 2015 and was attended by 30 researchers
and archivists connected with the Francia Media project.
11
After a brief introduction to the CSS and to the farm and its
community, including a short film featuring the farmers
talking about the farm, the workshop participants were split
into small groups and were given a set of papers containing
sections of stories told by members of the farm community.
They were also told the gender of each of the story tellers,
and whether the story teller was a volunteer or a paid farmer.
The groups were then asked to organise the stories and
narratives from the films into themes and to use these themes
to remediate the stories into a single narrative. The following
examples illustrate the types of materials available to the
groups:
“I have lived … close to [farm] for 40 years and have
walked on the farm and have taken my children to
see the animals. I now have 7 grandchildren who also
like seeing the animals. My second son made his
marriage vows on the farmland. In the evening we
were allowed to use one of the large barns which
they cleared for us and about 30 people ate together
and then we danced the ‘Wise man and the fool’. We
had a wonderful evening that I always remember. ”
(Volunteer, female).
“[ there were] lots of enthusiastic work days, lots of
people turning up right from the beginning. … The
farm had a need for labour; but more than this it
needed the community to be involved - and many
wanted to be involved; this was a crisis; we did a lot
in a short space of time…” (Farmer, female).
“When I first heard about the farm I felt excited
about making links with my past – the idea of
making a transition with a group of like- minded
people. I remember thinking: this is why I am here
… I went to some meetings, not all; I wanted to
become part of the ‘movement’ … To be connecting
with it from somewhere out there gives a new
dimension.” (Volunteer, male).
“I made endless posters for different things. I
remember the ‘crisis’ poster that was put up
everywhere; and the public meetings; and endlessly
baking cakes and making tea – and I don’t remember
what for – we were consumed with the nitty gritty,
not the vision.” (Farmer, female).
“Most farmers these days feel isolated and detached
from the community. Here that’s just not
possible…we have a team who can listen to our
worries and advise us.” (Farmer, male).
“We were a strong group who were interested in
more than workdays and festivals and remained
involved for many years. We wanted to be involved;
it wasn’t cerebral but more from the heart. It was an
exciting time – we were going to solve problems. …
This worked to the extent that it kept alive the idea
of a “community farm” whereas today we have a
structure in the form of the Co- op. In those days it
was a “body of warmth”; we were doing pioneering
work and, as such, made it up as we went along. ”
(Volunteer, male)
“I have been incredibly fortunate: to be able to
follow my vision and principles and to be supported
by the community. I may not have had the best wage,
and I have worked long hours, but I couldn’t have
done it without the community – it simply wouldn’t
have been the same.” (Farmer, male).
“I first supported the farms as a social impulse –
many of us did. That is no longer necessary, but I
feel really connected with the farms every time I go
to shop, or to an event.” (Volunteer, male).
One of the key questions asked by many of the groups was
about the identity of those whose stories has been told and,
of those, which had been selected for the workshop. How did
the groups know if key people or stories were missing? Had
the researchers and community sought out people who had
ceased to volunteer or farm (the answer was yes), had anyone
declined to offer stories (no), had all the stories been framed
and recorded in the same format (no), and so on? In this way
the groups realised that they needed first to situate the stories
for themselves, to help them understand who was involved.
They were also concerned about the multiple ways in which
the stories had been generated and captured, and they also
wanted to know how ‘original’ the transcripts were that they
had been given. All of these questions helped the groups see
the value of the CSS, in terms of both the boundaries of their
enquiry and in terms of the links between socio- political
questions about who was and was not present and who later
has the ‘right’ to mediate or remediate other people’s stories
and narratives. This was considered very helpful when
addressing old manuscripts and stories relating to Europe in
the Middle Ages – what questions should we ask before
undertaking an analysis (or remediation) of these scripts, and
what limits might this impose on the analysis that we feel
that we can undertake?
Having ( largely) accepted the constraints imposed by the
format of the workshop, the groups did interpret the
materials available to them, to form a view that the initial
idealism of the entire farm community – volunteers and
farmers – had played out in different ways – that the farmers
had been able to realise their visions in ways that had largely
eluded the volunteers. The farmers, for example, looked
back to the help that they had needed at the start, and how
this had later allowed them to farm in a way not available to
12
conventional ( and isolated) farmers. While the volunteers
shared the early activities, the sense was that they no longer
considered themselves necessary to the farm. This led to a
slight bitterness and longing for the past in some of them,
while others seemed to have adapted to a less engaged but
still supportive role. Interestingly this is quite at odds with
the outcome of the original exercise, where the farmers felt
as if they carried evermore responsibility for the farm, and
that the ideal of co-responsibility had got lost along the way,
as volunteers could no longer contribute in the ways that they
had at the start – or were no longer willing to contribute in
this way.
Reflections
One of the key findings so far is that a heterodox of people
and approaches can tack back and forth between different
locals, different communities of practice, and develop
infrastructures which facilitate the co- design of a model in
the shared space of a boundary object. This boundary object
is where the participants come together to address a shared
concern and at the same time where each individual is able
to navigate a pathway through the model for their own
purposes. In expanding the range of boundary objects to
include a personal and community histories methodology, it
is apparent that community should be conceptualised and
researched as a flexible, dynamic and contingent social form.
However, while suggesting that the participatory turn may
have led to convergence between academics and
practitioners, the model reminds us that authority and power
remain important catalysts of division, particularly in terms
of practical and ethical questions about the outcomes and
legacy of the work.
Nevertheless, the model – as boundary object – does offer
new insights into the processes and tensions that are at play
in generating stories that have a place in, and work on, the
world. Asking questions about how stories are situated and
generated helps us become aware of the differentials of
power between actors, while the mediation and remediation
of the stories remind us that even simple narratives have a
life well beyond the words. This brings into focus other
questions, about the extent to which the act of generating and
mediating stories leads to change in communities – and if so,
what are the implications for those who ask the questions and
give the answers? And what about the impact of remediation,
particularly if it offers an alternative or critical reading of the
stories and, thus, of the community itself?
Next steps
We are commencing a new project in the North of England
that has been framed by the CSS, both to offer a more
thoroughgoing ‘road test’ of its functionality and to examine
the insights that it may offer about some very different
communities living in close proximity to each other. The
plan for the work is based on the kind of tacking back and
forth between different locals that Star recognises, between
communities, volunteer intermediaries and researchers,
testing and refining the CSS, using it to address specific
research questions and then revising it for a range of future
applications. At this stage the model remains very much a
conceptualisation of the full possibilities of a co- design
approach to participative research. One of our tasks will be
to plot the ways in which different groups and communities
of practice tack back and forth between local and specific,
and shared versions, of the model, and how these relate to
whether there are different ‘routes’ through the model that
are used for different purposes, such as facilitation or
reflection, for example. Tracing these different movements
may allow us to specify further the possibilities for our
model as a ‘toolbox’ approach to data generation and
analysis, where different ‘tools’ are used for different
purposes, across different locals. Such an approach could,
we believe, form the basis for reworking the boundaries of
academic-community practice.
References
Bruns, A. (2008) Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and beyond: from production to produsage. New York: Peter Lang.
de Laet, M. and Mol, A. (2000) The Zimbabwe Bush Pump:
mechanics of a fluid technology. Social Studies of Science, 30(2): 225–63.
Gilchrist, P. , Holmes, C. , Lee, A. , Moore, N. and
Ravenscroft, N. ( 2015) Co- designing nonhierarchical
community arts research: the collaborative stories spiral.
Qualitative Research Journal 15(4): 459-471.
Jasanoff, S. ( ed) ( 2004) States of knowledge: the co-production of science and social order. London: Routledge.
Mah, A. and Crow, G. (2011) Researching community in the
21st Century: an annotated bibliography. Unpublished report for AHRC. Southampton University. Available at
http: / / www. community-
methods.soton.ac.uk/resources/Annotated_Bibliography_1_
Sept_2011.pdf
Ravenscroft, N. , Moore, N. and Welch, E. ( 2011)
Connecting communities through food: the development of
community supported agriculture in the UK. Final report to AHRC Connected Communities Programme.
http: / / www. ahrc. ac. uk/ documents/ project- reports- and-
reviews/ connected- communities/ connecting- communities-
through-food/
Ravenscroft, N. , Moore, N. , Welch, E. and Church, A.
( 2012) Connecting communities through food: the
theoretical foundations of community supported agriculture
13
in the UK. Working Paper No. 115. CRESC Working Paper Series. Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change, Open
University and University of Manchester.
Star, S.L. (2010) This is not a boundary object: reflections on the origin of a concept. Science, Technology & Human
Values, 35(5): 601-617.
Vicelja-Matijašić, M. (ed) (2015) Swords, crowns, censers and books: Francia Media – cradles of European culture.
Centre for Iconographic Studies,
14
“A CRACK IN TIME 2015” –
IMMERSIVE LEARNING THROUGH PERFORMANCE IN MUSEUM & HERITAGE SETTINGS
Peter Rumney
School of Art & Design
Nottingham Trent University
Email:
Nettie Scriven
Dragon Breath Theatre
Email:
Abstract
A Crack in Time 20151 was a collaboration between
Papplewick Pumping Station, Nottinghamshire 2, and
Dragon Breath Theatre 3. It was the culmination of 4 years’
action research and interpretation development at
Papplewick with a number of schools and partners.
A 5 hour, immersive performance for schoolchildren and
families, the project explored how museum/ heritage
interpretation can benefit from narrative performance to
engage new, younger audiences, offering visitors an
unusual cultural experience, and unique learning
opportunities. It investigated how site-specific theatre can
be the springboard for interdisciplinary learning about a
site, its history, and important associated local/ global
issues.
The performances at Papplewick were integrated with
follow-up workshops in schools and publication of Online
Education Resources for teachers and parents.
Evaluation with schoolchildren, teachers, families and
stakeholders indicates the project’s approach was very
effective in engaging young people and adults with a museum and heritage site. Evaluation data indicates how
the introduction of empathetic engagement with live
characters; hands on participation in an event; and physical
exploration of the site can challenge and enhance young
people’s learning experiences. Evaluation for the museum,
theatre company, and funders also indicates that the
sustainability (financial and resources) of such a successful
approach to interpretation must be explored if it is to be
advocated to other sites.
Keywords:
Museum and Heritage Interpretation. Young People’s
Theatre. Immersive Performance. Water Education. Multimodal Learning.
Project Aims
A Crack in Time 2015 aimed to:
1. Increase the numbers of young people visiting Papplewick from across the region, through a
programme targeted at schools and family audiences . 2. Find ways to interpret the site in a more interesting
and accessible way, through a performance/ interpretation programme, supported by workshops
in schools and online resources
3. Invite children aged 8- 12+ to gain a new
understanding of their local industrial, water and
social heritage, and enable them, by extension, to
consider the urgent contemporary global issue of
water management and conservation. 4. Engage volunteers directly with the professional
interpretation team, in order to increase
sustainability.
Introduction – preparatory work
The A Crack In Time Project 2015 was the culmination of
four years’ work by artists and educators working in collaboration with Papplewick Pumping Station and local
schools. The project discussed here grew out of two
previous Action and Performance Research phases:
The GET Wet Action Research 4 project (2011-13), led by
the University of Nottingham’s University’s Centre for
Advanced Studies, created an interdisciplinary framework
using Papplewick as the stimulus for a new Water
Curriculum. GET Wet utilised Papplewick’s 130-year-old
pumping station as a catalyst for learning, in line with the
of Papplewick Water Education Trust’s aspirations.
In the subsequent A Crack in Time R&D project (2013) 5,
Dragon Breath Theatre drew on this educational research, and explored the feasibility of a whole day’s interpretation
performance event for schools. This project explored the
Pumping Station as a site for ‘immersive performance’,
bringing the Pumping Station’s history and heritage to life, and raising young people’s awareness of the complexities
of local/global water conservation and management.
Drawing on its work in the two previous projects - and the
audience’s feedback to the R&D programme - Dragon
Breath Theatre brought together a team of
performer/ musicians, visual artists, composers, film
makers and technical experts led by the writer, designer
and production director.
15 In addition to the 5-hour performance event, the company
delivered follow up workshop in participating schools the
week of their visit to Papplewick and published an extensive Online Education Resource for teachers through
the Museum’s website 6.
A framework for the immersive heritage
experience
A number of principles were brought to bear in the
development and delivery of this programme of work.
1. Many of Dragon Breath’s previous theatre programmes
have researched the efficacy of theatre in communicating
complex ideas to young people, using performance as a
stimulus for generating sophisticated understanding and
debate about ideas many pedagogues might consider too
advanced for the target audiences we were working for. E.g.
The scientific and moral dimensions of advances in stem
cell nuclear transfer (The Icarus Project 2005-7, age 13 and
above) , and the nature and dynamics of the universe
(Cosmos 2008-10, aged 4 and above) 7.
These programmes are distinctive in their use of R&D
phases, where artists work alongside children,
undergraduates, schoolteachers, scientists and pedagogues
to develop work reflecting young peoples’ authentic
voices and grounded in pedagogical excellence.
The theatrical principles that underpinned these
productions and schemes of work were:
• Epic, large scale visual theatre;
• Sophisticated poetic text;
• The use of empathy to engage both the emotions and
the intellect;
• and the use of multimedia, music, puppets and
choreography synchronised within a live, narrative
performance event.
These performance principles were brought to bear in A
Crack in Time, and were consciously deployed to create
experiences that went far beyond the ( very legitimate)
delivery of ‘costumed interpretation’ that many museums
and heritage sites employ.
2. As artist-researchers in the 2011- 13 Get Wet project,
the lead artists in A Crack in Time drew on the
pedagogical principles developed by the University of Nottingham team, all of which chime with Dragon
Breath’s methodology, including:
• Connecting with the everyday experiences of
young people, making direct connections between
the past and the present through performance, and inviting children to make local and the global
connections when considering the geopolitics of
water management.
• Developing an interdisciplinary curriculum
inspired by the questions that children have about
water, and, interpreting them in a performance
sphere.
• Developing creative approaches that generate
interest and to help make connections between
areas of knowledge.
• Artists working in partnership with teachers to
develop activities that meet overall curriculum
goals.
In detail, A Crack in Time also drew on core Get Wet
ideas such as:
• The importance of the Papplewick Pumping
Station site visit being built into the curriculum
so that children understand what it is, and why it
is there.
• Specific curriculum ideas, such as virtual water and the urban water cycle to help students explain
things that they see around them, challenge their
understanding of the world, how it works and
should be managed.
These performance and pedagogical principles were
equally important in the whole day immersive event,
the subsequent workshops, and the online education
resources.
The performance interpretation itself investigates how
empathy ( with a character) can firstly, engage and
secondly, enhance a learning experience which might
otherwise remain inaccessible, too complex, or difficult
to understand. This empathetic core is supported by
examination of different approaches to multimodal
learning ( such as kinaesthetic and verbal activities,
singing, walking and reflection) which takes place
during the visit to Papplewick.
The performance sat within a context articulated by
authors such as Black ( 2011) 8 and Jackson and Kidd (2012) 9. As Black observes in “Evaluating the impact of
museum learning”, measuring learning outside a formal
pedagogical setting is never simple. In this context, he
quotes the 1998 Campaign for Learning definition of
learning as “a process of active engagement with
experience. It is what people do when they want to make
sense of the world. It may involve increase in or deepening
of skills, knowledge, understanding, values, feelings,
attitudes and the capacity to reflect. Effective learning
leads to change, development and the desire to learn
more.” Such a philosophy underpinned all aspects of the
Crack in Time project
Sources for interpretation:
The characters, dramatic content, and narrative sweep and
design concepts for the performance were researched from
a number of sources - existing archival sources held on site;
those held at the University of Nottingham Archive; and
material in the public domain. Key to further development
of the piece was oral history undertaken by the team with
the Olifent family, inhabitants of the site who had lived at
Papplewick as children in the 1930s to 1950s, and who
16 uncovered previously hidden material detailing aspects of
Papplewick’s living social heritage. This oral history fed
into the development of the script, site design, and filmic
elements.
In addition, the impact of 3 years’ previous project
delivery and research was considerable. Firstly, the wider
scientific, political and educational elements underpinning
and driving the visitors’ experience at Papplewick were
drawn from the extensive action research undertaken in the
Get Wet project. Secondly, the R&D pilot performance
project in 2013 not only scoped narrative content and the
considerable logistical challenges of the project, but also
enabled young people to feed their responses and
evaluations into the process of developing the final content
( e. g. responding to their desire for more engineering
knowledge; and greater participation of female characters
in the narrative)
The immersive performance event:
The performance was delivered by a team of professional
actor/ musicians and stage managers, supported by the
Musuem Director in role, and by Papplewick volunteers. It took place across all of Papplewick’s locations,
including the empty underground reservoir, abandoned in
1902 due to the eponymous “crack” in its walls.
Each visitor was immersed in a range of experiences – performative, hands on and visual. All these were later
evaluated by the audience to test their efficacy fostering
learning and engagement). These experiences included:
• Structured journeys through the varied locations and
vistas of the site, enhanced through design elements;
• Empathetic engagement with the dramatic narratives
of costumed historical characters ( factual and
fictional); • Hands on examination of the site’s elements and
objects, with interpretation support by characters;
• Singing (including participatory song) and music;
• Film interpretation on both micro and macro scale;
• Periods of reflection and discussion at different
points in the day.
Papplewick Pumping Station itself was constructed to pipe
fresh, clean water, pumped by gravitational forces to
Nottingham 9 miles away. It was part of a mission to
eradicate the waterborne diseases that had created such
misery and havoc during the preceding century. During
the day the audience witness - and become involved in - the
dramatisation of events that inspired the building of the
Pumping Station in the1880s.
The journey through the site and its narratives:
On arrival at the site, the audience of 70 discover a
contemporary, indigenous Bolivian water activist camped
outside the museum gates. She raises their awareness of
current global water management issues through song, and
then invites them to step “into the past” by entering
through Papplewick’s gates with her. Once inside the gates, and within the museum landscape,
the visitor becomes part of a variegated story. It is told at
one moment on an epic scale, with vistas populated with
characters, or topographical and engineering features. At
the next moment, there are detailed interactions with both
site and character.
Initially, the Museum’s grounds are populated with unexplained Victorian characters who may have lived or
worked at Papplewick. This invites the viewers to
construct, as they walk through the site, their own
narratives for who the characters be. Several of the
characters, including Mr Montagu the Superintendent and
his wife Mrs Montagu act as guides and interpreters.
Arriving at the cooling pond, the children see Jenny
Sparrow being rowed across the lake. She sings a lament
for her small children, who were victims of the cholera. Jenny inspires Nottingham engineer Thomas Hawksley to
take action. The children engage with Hawksley’s moral
and utilitarian crusade, both to change attitudes, and to engineer viable systems for the supply of fresh water to the
town, Papplewick being the prime surviving example. The
conflict between Hawksley and the nay-sayers and vested
interests he encounters is interrupted by Mr and Mrs Montagu, giving the audience an opportunity to participate
and articulate their understanding of the dramatic conflicts
they are witnessing. The use empathy with the characters
draws the viewers into the story and makes it of
importance to them.
After investigating the Engine House, the audience are
divided into smaller groups for the rest of the day, visiting four characters in separate performance locations in a
round robin sequence - Hawksley ( Engine House) , Mrs
Montagu (Scullery) , Seth the Gardener (Greenhouse) , and
Wilf the Boiler Boy and Jenny Sparrow (Boiler House) . Each location is designed to enhance the original architectural, engineering, domestic or agricultural
features, and enable them to be brought to life by the
characters and the audience themselves.
Each 20 minute scene, (repeated and adapted four times
with different groups), offers the visitor
• Character narrative to empathise with;
• Kinaesthetic activities to deepen understanding of
how the Pumping Station worked (e.g. the pumping
system; the functioning of the great boilers; the
growing of food; the running of the home) • Music/song to give a lyricism to the performance,
engage the emotions, and help memorise learning;
• Discussion between the actors and audience, which could depart completely from script at times in
response to the children’s responses and interests.
The morning ends with the urgent message that there is a problem with Papplewick’s underground reservoir one
mile up the track, a “crack” in the wall, and a promise to
investigate after lunch.
17 In the afternoon, after reflecting with the team on the
experience of the day so far, the audience walks up to the
reservoir that used to supply Nottingham with water.
This beautiful 20-minute walk (and return journey) afford
opportunities for 1:1 conversations with the
characters/ interpreters, and a chance for each visitor to
construct their own narrative for what they will encounter
when they reach the end of the trail
When they reach the summit, the audience splits into two
in order to visit two distinct sites:
1. They journey down into the empty, mystical, damp,
abandoned underground reservoir. Here they;
• Respond to the location through looking, listening and discussion;
• Witness installations responding to the aesthetics of
the underground architecture;
• Encounter Hawksley singing by the eponymous crack
in the wall. This ‘crack in time’ caused the reservoir to
drain 100 years ago. Hawksley’s ghost connects
Papplewick’s past with the present, and urges the
audience to take action addressing the environmental
impacts of water management in the modern world
‘above ground’;
• View a large triptych projection containing original films of water as a natural phenomenon; used
spiritually and culturally by human kind; and degraded
through our misuse in the modern era. These interactions bring the purpose of Papplewick, clean
water supply, up to date in a modern global context.
2. At the upper site, the audience also visit a large bell tent. Here they witness a resolution of dramatic elements from
the morning, focussing on female characters who are not
usually visible in ‘written’ history ( Jenny and Mrs
Montagu).
The audience take part in role- play with the actors,
developing their characters from the narratives that they
found of most interest, and engaging empathetically once
again with the stories they have encountered on their
journey through the site.
Once the audience has experienced both these locations,
the day resolves with an invitation by the contemporary
Water Guardian ( who had first drawn the audience into
Papplewick’s ‘past’) . Discussing how she has to carry
water for hours each day to survive, and explaining how
much ‘virtual water’ we use on a daily basis ourselves, she reveals her purpose in inviting the children to become
water guardians themselves, as global citizens in the
future.
Contextual activities:
In the post- performance workshops, which included
roleplay, visual art, singing, dance and ritualised
discussion, participants were encouraged to revisit aspects
of the performance narrative and characters, and articulate their own responses to both Papplewick’s engineering
history, and to the contemporary issues raised by the
performance and the site itself.
Teachers were able to follow up these interventions by
utilising on the Online Resources to embed the Papplewick
work within a water- focussed curriculum embracing
science, geography, history, mathematics and literacy.
Evaluation methodology:
The company performed to and worked in depth with 1127
children from 20 East Midlands schools, over a period of
7 weeks. 1120 children were involved in 38 half-day follow
up workshops delivered in the week of their visit to
Papplewick.
The project targeted young people who may not normally have the opportunity to experience cultural events of this
kind.
The effectiveness of the project was evaluated with:
(i) Focus groups of 50 children and their teachers in 6
selected schools representing a wide range of
demographic and geographic circumstances. (ii) A wider sample of 350 children giving written
feedback;
(iii) In-depth written feedback from 10 teachers (iv) Oral responses of teachers, family visitors and
museum and heritage professionals, and the onsite
team including Papplewick’s volunteer
participants.
(v) Videoed feedback by 12 children and 2 teachers,
and 18 other adults including team members, volunteers, the Museum Director and a funding
representative.
In the focus groups totalling 50 children, the evaluation
sessions lasted between 1 and 2 hours, and asked:
• 7 general questions about children’s responses to the experience and what they had learned from it,
providing qualitative data;
• 44 questions about what they had learned about each
specific element in the days’ proceedings, providing
both qualitative and quantitative data.
Evaluation results:
Ways of learning:
The study ascertained that the main way in which children
learned about Papplewick’s heritage was through their
interactions with characters, encountered in varied locations during a geographical journey through the day.
When asked in detail which elements of the day enabled
children to learn (‘discover’) most, the research data shows
the following scored mostly highly in pupil responses: • interaction with the characters and their personal
stories;
• singing songs;
• doing practical physical/practical activities
. The audience’s understanding of the heritage was reinforced and deepened because children engaged with
18 the characters’ emotional predicaments, rather than simply
having facts explained to them by costumed interpreters.
e.g. from ‘Wilf the boiler boy’ and ‘Jenny Sparrow’ they
learned through interactive drama and song how hard and
dangerous life was in the C19th.
Empathy for these and other character narratives meant the
children were highly motivated to learn more, to ask the
characters questions, and to piece together their own
understanding of Papplewick’s history and importance.
e.g. Mr Hawksley telling his family story - and debating
with the childrenabout ‘right and wrong’ in the world - was
“very interesting and emotionally and deeply explained” (Child) , enabling the audience to understand “how water
was delivered to Nottingham” (Child).
The audience were sufficiently motivated by their interest
in this character to discover complex engineering and scientific concepts, learned through assisting Hawksley
with kinaesthetic activities explaining, for example, Papplewick’s pumping system.
“[ These were] difficult concepts…showing how
Papplewick worked. . . The little one liners and snippets
about [Hawksley’s] father were picked up by the children.”
(Teacher, Lowdham)
e. g. From Mrs Montagu’s physical work/ singing in the
Scullery“[ We learned] how to wash in Victorian times” ( Child) , and that life was hard for C19th women - “No
electricity. No relaxation. . . hard work cooking and
cleaning” (Child).
e. g. Engagement with Seth the gardener helped the
audience connect Papplewick with the necessity for water
in the natural and human ecology. In the Greenhouse, they
learned about the concept of ‘virtual’ ( hidden) water
consumption by eating apples and drinking water
themselves. (This important concept was reinforced in the
bell tent next to the Reservoir and in the subsequent School
Workshops)
The audience could also change the course of some scenes
through questioning and challenging of the characters. As
the day progressed, their reactions to one micro site
influenced their responses to other locations ( e. g. after
meeting and empathising with Wilf in the Boiler House
they often challenged his ‘employer’ Mr Hawksley in the
Engine House about Wilf’s working conditions and
poverty).
In this immersive experience, the empathetic response to
characters, and the moral questions these interactions raised, made the learning of engineering, historical facts or
scientific principles much more embedded.
Sample Focus group responses:
50% of focus group children gave learning through
character interaction 10/10 for effectiveness.
The majority of respondents felt seeing and doing activities
was very effective in their learning.
Singing was considered very helpful to learning by most,
if not all, children.
Understanding the heritage: Both teacher and pupil feedback indicated that children
gained an understanding that “clean water led to life
longevity” (Teacher) , that “dirty water spread diseases” ( Teacher) , and “that they clearly understood life before
and after Papplewick was built” (Teacher) . Focus group
evaluations showed that children understood the main
engineering and scientific principles through which clean
water was first pumped from the Papplewick well; then stored in the underground reservoir; and finally piped from
Papplewick to Nottingham through the use of gravitational
forces. They understood why this enterprise was crucial to
improving living conditions and public health by reducing
incidents of cholera and other water borne diseases.
This knowledge was enshrined and reinforced through the
conversations children had with the characters during the
day, and the songs they learned along the way. The use of
original songs, sung by both characters and by the
audience at different times further intensified the learning
experiences and reinforced memory of them. ( This was
attested to in the workshop programme, where the
facilitators were often greeted spontaneously through song
by the children as they arrived at school).
“They answered all your questions – but gave you questions to think about – in small groups you found out
the answer…The films and singing were really good – they
gave you a feel for what they did other than just talking
19 about it…when they sang it lifted the scene, even if it was
a sad scene.” (Child) Through these interactions at Papplewick children
understood, not only the significance of the Museum in
terms of engineering and public health, but also that such
enterprises represented a significant undertaking in
political, economic and social terms in Victorian times. Coupled with their appreciation of the aesthetics and
functions of the museum buildings, the children therefore
gained a much deeper understanding of Victorian society,
its living conditions and aspirations.
Making connections - contemporary water issues: By supporting this immersive performative experience, in
which the child felt ownership of the action, rather than
simply being the recipient of it, the follow up workshop
programme was key to embedding the learning experienced in the museum setting, and to supporting
interdisciplinary learning in the school subsequently.
The emphasis of the workshop team – who responded to all kinds of learning styles through the varied activities
they undertook - was to enable the children to be proactive
in recalling and understanding their visit to Papplewick. In
the workshop, the team were able to tease out and extend
the implications of the Papplewick heritage for today.
Water management and conservation is an urgent, global
issue. The performance invited children to understand their
industrial and water heritage, and consider their
custodianship of water as global citizens.
The local dimension of the programme was strongly
emphasised. In the final scene, played out after the visit to
the underground reservoir, the audience were invited to consider the impact of Papplewick and its infrastructure on
their own lives. Children from Nottingham became aware
of Papplewick’s contemporary significance to their daily
lives in terms of accessing fresh water. Children from
further afield were alerted to similar schemes in their area
that still affect their lives (e.g. Thomas Hawksley’s water
and gas engineering feats in Leicester and Derby). “You spoke about the reservoir supplying water to Bulwell
and to their homes. This made it relevant and ‘real’ to
them” (Teacher, Nottingham)
“The session in the reservoir and the tent helped them see
the significance of water and its value…Talking to [Boiler
Boy] Wilf, they understood life was very different for
children their age in those days” (Teacher, Leicester)
Through their engagement with character and stories from
the past, the audience made connections between
Papplewick’s legacy, and its importance to them today.
Global learning
Through the character of the Water Guardian, they were
also able to understand Papplewick’s water heritage in the context of contemporary global water issues, such as the
importance of water to life, its conservation and
management. This aspect of learning is fundamental to
Papplewick’s purpose as a site for learning.
The audience were also able to compare the lives of child
characters from the Papplewick story to their own experiences, and compare both with the lives of other
children across the world today…those who have to walk
daily to find water, or who are denied an education because
of poverty or water management issues. This was
reinforced and deepened in the school workshops.
The event and workshop gave the children an
understanding of “how fortunate they are to have clean
water on tap, how many countries do not have this, [and] that water is precious…and ways of saving water” (Teacher)
“They made the connection between Nepal now, and the
problems in Nottingham [ in the past]…they were able to
make connections between the impact of natural
phenomena such as earthquakes on water born diseases
[ by understanding] Papplewick’s importance to
eradicating cholera in the C19th.” (Teacher) “They are more aware of their role as citizens of the world and how they could make a difference through the choices
they make” (Teacher)
“I liked the reservoir. …How interesting and strange it
was…and when Mr Hawksley, he stood up for what he
believed in, for Nottingham to have clean water and enough dying…because he promised Jenny, who lost her
two children because of the Higgler, who gave dirty water
out…and he succeeded…and I’ve discovered that water is
a huge meaning to life and everybody will need it! (Child)
All the children talked about how their perceptions and
attitudes had changed due to the project. Some felt they
were already aware of water issues through work they had
already done in school ( linked to the project or otherwise) and through television campaigns by water charities.
Most felt they had changed their attitude to how they used
water themselves. Most had not encountered the concept
of virtual water before, except through project-linked work.
“[My attitude has changed] because I learned about the
Victorians” (Child) “My attitude has changed because people around the
world don’t have clean water.” (Child)
“Yes, treat water like drinkable diamonds” (Child)
“It has had a lasting, memorable effect on the children.” (Teacher)
Summary
A Crack in Time 2015 succeeded in bringing Victorian
Papplewick to life, and raising important questions about
water management across the world today, which is the
purpose of Papplewick’s Water Education Trust.
The responses of all audiences and participants in the
project indicate that an immersive, character and narrative
based, interactive experience is a powerful way to engage all audiences with Papplewick Pumping Station, and that
this model should be advocated across the museum sector.
20 Through this approach, the Museum was able to increase
its public profile with a much younger audience, and set
up opportunities for further audience development in the
future. Most schools stated that their visit to Papplewick
was the best educational visit they had ever brought
children on, in terms of the beauty and heritage of the site,
and the way in which it was interpreted by the team in an
educational context. All the schools indicated that they
were much more likely to return to visit Papplewick if it
was interpreted through performance rather than through
other means.
The project succeeded in engaging children from a wide
demographic range – it successfully targeted a high
proportion of young people who had never visited a
heritage site or museum such as Papplewick before, and A Crack in Time represented a significant and unusual
cultural experience for these audiences in particular.
This approach to museum interpretation has implications
for Papplewick and its funding of future education work; managing it; and for the support and management of
volunteers who may be involved in the interpretation
process. Following the project Dragon Breath and
Papplewick Pumping Station trust are working on the sustainabilitybof perofrmacne work, and its role in
stimultting and developing the museum’s future education
programmes.
“I’m fantastically impressed…I go to lots of heritage sites, often with children in attendance, and rarely have I seen a
group of children actually engage so completely with a
place as they have done here. This seems to me to be an
enormously impressive example of engaging young people
in heritage and history…so it looks to me as if this project,
is Papplewick reaching out to embrace other audiences through presenting itself in rather a different way from the
way it normally presents itself, and that’s good from
Papplewick and impressive again, it’s a novel approach,
it would be good to see many trusts that run these sort of sites taking up these sort of challenges ad trying to engage
these broader audiences through this innovative work with
school children” (Prof David Stocker, HLF Committee for
the East Midland)
A Crack in Time 2015 was funded by Arts Council
England, Heritage Lottery Fund, Garfield Weston
Foundation & East Midlands Museum Development Fund. It was supported by Lakeside Arts Centre, Spark Arts
festival Leicester, the university of Nottingham and
Nottingham Trent University.
REFERENCES
1. A Crack in Time 2015 Documentary Video,
Dragon Breath Theatre/Creative Forum 18
minutes https://youtu.be/voh5rfBaCZw
2. http://www.papplewickpumpingstation.org.uk/
3. www.dragonbreaththeatre.com
4. http://www.getwet.org.uk/
5. 2013 R&D project videos, Dragon Breath
Theatre/G-Force http://www.dragonbreaththeatre.com/crack_in_ti
me.htm
6. Online Resources
http://www.papplewickpumpingstation.org.uk/a-crack-in-time/
7. www.dragonbreaththeatre.com Cosmos
https://vimeo.com/26835013 8. Black, G Transforming Museums in the 21st
Century, Routledge, 2012, ISBN-10: 0415615739
9. Jackson, A and Kidd, J, Performing heritage: research, practice and innovation in museum
theatre and live interpretation, MUP, 2012,
ISBN-13: 978-0719081590.
21
INVESTIGATING THE IMPACT OF MOBILE PHONE APPS ON THE EMOTIONAL REACTION AND ENGAGEMENT
OF VISITORS TO THE CULTURAL QUARTER, LEICESTER
Jennifer Margaret Wilkinson De Montfort University, Leicester, UK
Email: [email protected]
ABSTRACT
This paper presents the findings of an evaluation study into the
impact of two different mobile phone apps on the experience of
visitors to the Cultural Quarter in Leicester.
This paper argues that mobile apps do have a positive impact on
visitor engagement with heritage sites although this impact can
be limited if the app is poorly designed or lacking in the features
which the visitor feels they require to make their visit satisfying.
In this project participants identified the acquisition of
knowledge as a highly significant and vital component for their
engagement. The results of this project shows that the apps were
successful in creating interest and sparking curiosity but that this,
on its own, was not be sufficient to engage those whose key
motivation was to learn and that lack of appropriate, easily
accessible reference material would ultimately result in a
disappointing experience for the visitor.
This paper argues that mobile apps do have some impact on the
intensity with which visitors experience an emotional response
to a heritage site, although it is not possible to determine, from
this study, the extent to which this might happen or the precise
manner in which this happens.
Keywords: visitor studies, mobile phone apps, engagement,
cultural heritage, digital heritage, evaluation.
INTRODUCTION
The purpose of this paper is to present the findings of a study
which investigated the impact of two different mobile phone apps
on visitor experience to a historically and culturally rich area of
Leicester, the Cultural Quarter. The project aimed to answer the
following research questions:
• How does the use of the mobile app, on location,
impact on visitor engagement with the heritage site?
• How does the use of the mobile app, on location,
impact in the emotional response of the visitor to the
heritage site?
To answer these questions the project studied:
• how visitors felt about the area before and after their
visit,
• what visitors knew about the area before and after their
visit,
• how interested visitors were in history generally, and
local history, before and after their visit,
• how the use of the app, during their visit to the site,
impacted on their emotional response to the area and
their engagement with the location.
BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT
Context for Research Project
My PhD seeks to analyse the impact of interactive digital media
on effective audience engagement in heritage sites.
Parry (2007) states that digital technology has the potential to
stimulate curiosity and allow visitors to assemble and explore
new ideas, reshape the museum and empower proactive visitor
involvement. Katz et al (2011) argue that technology has so far
failed to transform the interpretive landscapes in museums,
whilst De Freitas and Veletsianos (2010) promote the view that
activities such as virtual worlds could increase learner
empowerment and participation.
Engagement is a two way process requiring interaction where
visitors are the instigators of their own story telling (Derby
Museums, 2010). Engaging audiences requires museums and
heritage sites to attract the visitor, hold their attention and
encourage reflection. Museums wishing to increase engagement
should adopt audience centred approaches to interpretation
(Black, 2005). Kelly (2002) argues that museum audiences
require customised personal involvement and that a museum
experience should provide self-reflective content with active
learning opportunities through contemporary modes of
information exchange.
An audience centred approach corresponds with interaction
design principles where the focus is on people and how they
interact with a product (Saffer, 2007). User centred and human
centred design emphasise the needs and goals of the end user,
and provides new ways of connecting people to people (Benyon,
2010). Poor interaction design can leave the user confused,
irritated and disinterested (Preece et al, 2002). Technology can
get in the way of people and the things they want to do (Norman,
1988).
Whilst much is written about the potential of digital media to
engage, and the importance of good human centred interaction
design, less is understood about the resulting effectiveness of
22 digital products in the context of how people interpret and engage
with heritage sites.
Museums and heritage sites are increasingly developing digital
solutions and the production of mobile phone apps, for this
purpose, is growing. These projects often lack the appropriate
resource or planning to adequately evaluate the digital outcomes
in terms of functionality, usability or success in increasing
audience engagement (Wilkinson and Higgett, 2015).
This project aims to address this gap in our understanding,
particularly in relation to apps designed to provide engagement
with heritage sites where there is limited on-site interpretation.
The Cultural Quarter, Leicester
The Cultural Quarter is a small area of Leicester, close to the city
centre. Rich in heritage the area contains examples of modern
and historical, juxtaposing 21st century architecture with
dilapidated Victorian buildings.
Formerly known as St Georges and situated largely within the
boundaries of the St George’s Conservation area (Urban Design
Group, Leicester City Council, 2003) the Cultural Quarter
contains many structures of historical importance including St
Georges Church, 1879, the Leicestershire Disabled Guild 1909,
the former Odeon cinema 1938, Charles Street Police Station
1933 and a number of examples of Victorian factories including
the former bootlace warehouse Alexandra House 1898, and the
Pfister and Vogel leather warehouse 1923. Commercial
businesses, past and present, such as the former Hide and Skin
market and the offices and printing works of the Leicester
Mercury are also part of this area.
Many old buildings have been repurposed; Victorian factories
have been converted into apartments, the former Leicester City
Bus depot is now a creative hub, know as Leicester Creative
Businesses housing a number of small businesses, and the Two
Queens art gallery occupies a former warehouse.
Significant investment in the area including two flagship
construction projects, Curve Theatre and the Phoenix Cinema,
plus the development of new bars, restaurants and music venues
have transformed the area into a significant cultural destination.
Affective Digital Histories Project Affective Digital Histories: Recreating De-Industrialised places,
1970’s – Present was an Arts and Humanities Research Council
(AHRC) funded project based at the University of Leicester.
Working with community participants the project explored the
hidden and untold stories of people who lived and worked in
former industrial buildings in the East Midlands including
Leicester’s Cultural Quarter. The project focused on de-
industrialised areas, collecting personal reminiscences to
establish a picture of how communities shaped their environment
economically and culturally in the context of urban change.
Leicester’s Cultural Quarter was once a bustling industrial and
commercial district central to the hosiery and footwear
manufacturing. Industrial decline in the 1960s led to factories
closing and by the late 1990s the area was largely abandoned.
The Victorian industrial past is well documented and far less is
known about the period from the late 1970s to the late 1990s
when groups such as the Leicester United Caribbean Association,
punks, goths, bikers, cross-dressers and gay-friendly
organisations used the disused spaces. (Affective Digital
Histories, n.d.).
Created as part of this project and launched in November 2014
the Sounds of the Cultural Quarter and Hidden Stories mobile
phone apps provide users with interpretation of the Cultural
Quarter through sound clips and creative writing respectively.
Mobile Phone Apps: Sounds of the Cultural
Quarter
Overview
The Sounds of the Cultural Quarter App allows visitors to
“explore Leicester's Cultural Quarter through sounds from past
and present.” (GooglePlay n.d.a). According to the Google Play
store website you can “track your location on the map and
immerse yourself in the soundscapes to discover the Cultural
Quarter from a different perspective”. The app is intended to
provide an immersive, location based, experience of the area.
Sounds of the Cultural Quarter is a soundscape of over 30
authentic recordings representing various aspects of the Cultural
Quarter. Divided into two categories, present day recordings
include clips of journalists talking inside the Leicester Mercury
office, theatre goers chatting after a performance of Annie at
Curve, music from the dance venue Studio 79, bells from St
Georges’ Church and car engines from inside Big John’s Auto
Service garage whereas sounds from the past include
representations of people splashing around in the now
demolished Vestry Street baths, mechanisms of the old Printing
Works, singing from the Guild of the Disabled and music from
venues vibrant in the 1970s and 19080s such as the Leicester
United Caribbean Association and the Palais de Dance. Modern
day sounds were recorded specifically for inclusion in the app
and sound archives were used to source authentic clips for the
past sounds.
Interface – design and functionality
The interface is a simple map of the Cultural Quarter, showing
roads and the footprint of some main buildings, overlaid with
circles representing the physical location of each sound clip.
Orange circles are used to identify sounds from the present,
purple circles sounds from the past. Users can choose to listen
to sounds from either period, or a mixture of both. Current
location is signified by changing the colour of the relevant circle
to green.
The app can be used with or without geolocation. By pressing the
footprint symbol to switch on the geolocation the user can choose
to have the sounds automatically play as they wander through the
area. Each circle represents the geographic zone in which the
23 sound will play. Moving closer to the centre of the zone increased
the volume of the sound, which decreases the nearer you are to
the edge of the circle.
Fig 1: Screen Shot Sounds of the Cultural Quarter App –
Landing Page. Apple iPad version
The size of the circle indicates the range of the sound, the smaller
the circle, the smaller the range. Circles can overlap allowing
users to experience both at the same time as they transition
through the area. Interesting effects can be gained by overlapping
circles of different colour and consequently mixing different
periods of history. Users can choose to turn off the geolocation
and listen to the sounds simply by tapping the circle they would
like to hear, this feature means that it is possible to use the app
away from the Cultural Quarter.
Fig 2: Screen Shot Sounds of the Cultural Quarter App –
example of interpretation for the Leicester Mercury. The
green circle and black dot indicate the location of the user.
Apple iPad version
Minimal interpretation is provided. Other than knowing that the
sound is from the past or present, by virtue of the colour of the
circle the only additional information provided is a small tag
which identifies the source of the sound, which might read ‘flats’
or ‘music venue’. Some tags are generic, some are more specific,
such as ‘Athena’ or ‘Leicester Mercury’ although the visitor
would still need some level of local knowledge to understand this
reference.
Technical issues
Prior to running the study a short assessment was made of the
app to identify any potential technical difficulties which might
inadvertently affect the visitor experience. Further issues were
also identified during the site trails. For the most part the app
operates well, however there are a few issues:
• the android and i-phone versions differ in several
ways: the android version does not have a ‘pinch’
function which means it is not possible to resize the
map, making the map difficult to read and use,
• the i-phone devices are quicker, more responsive and
more accurate in their geolocation functionality than
the android devices.
• A number of the study participants reported that, in
order for the app to continue working, the screen must
remain constantly on and cannot be locked, potentially
resulting in additional battery usage.
Mobile Phone App: Hidden Stories
Overview
The Hidden Stories app has “woven creative writing with
smartphone technology to create a fascinating literary
exploration of Leicester's Cultural Quarter; specially
commissioned poetry, plays and narrative fiction explore urban
locations and their history” (GooglePlay n.d.b). According to
the Google Play website visitors can, “follow trails around the
area to find original content and uncover the Cultural Quarter's
hidden stories”. As with the Sounds of the Cultural Quarter this
app is intended to provide an immersive and alternative
experience of the area introducing the visitor to different ideas
enabling them to reimagine urban history.
Hidden Stories provides five different creative writing texts.
Each text has an associated trail and each trail has a starting point
with locations associated with each chapter in the text. Visitors
can either follow the trail, reading the chapters in the intended
order, or they can choose to read the chapters out of sequence.
Creative writers were specifically commissioned by the Centre
for New Writing, University of Leicester to create new stories.
Using archive material the writers worked with newly digitised
newspaper clippings, photographs and oral histories drawn from
the period 1970-1990 to inform their work. (Fowler, 2015).
Hidden Stories contains five creative writing texts:
24
• An Imperial Typewriter: written by Divya Ghelani this
is the story of a young Ugandan Asian man living in
Leicester in the 1970s and working for the Imperial
Typewriter Company. Set against the backdrop of the
Asian workers’ strike of the 1974 the protagonist of
this short story steals a typewriter and runs away with
it. A modern fable about an immigrant worker’s
journey through Leicester.
• Crow Step: a selection of poems by David Devanny
sampling a tiny selection of the stories about a small
number of the buildings. David’s focus is on
architecture and ornamentation, their uses and history
and the passions that people had for them.
• For the Love of Something: written by Irfan Master this
story is presented as a play, set in 1979 and tells the
story of a young Pakistani woman, and her experiences
of working in the Rowley’s factory.
• Love the Life You Live, Live the Life You Love: written
by Carol Leeming this is a choreopoem, a dramatic
dialogue, featuring Martin, a 24 year old gay duel
heritage Leicester man retelling an experience he had
on a celebratory night out in the St George’s
churchyard in the 1980s. It should be noted that only a
selection of verses, 8 out of a total of 68, are included
in the app.
• Marginalia: written by Kevan Manwaring is, with 16
chapters, the longest story trail in the app. Written in
the first person the author takes the reader on a personal
trip, exploring the Cultural Quarter with the help of a
trickster guide in the form of someone he names
Elephant Head, a Ganesha-esque skateboarding
graffiti-artist.
Interface – design and functionality
The app has a simple interface design, using similar features to
Sounds of the Cultural Quarter. Since both apps are from the
same project they contain a consistent navigational layout and
use the same factory icon for the back button.
Fig 3: Screen Shot: Hidden Stories - Landing Page. Apple
iPad version
The underlying map has a hand-drawn quality consistent with the
creative nature of both the Cultural Quarter and the Hidden
Stories app. Initially all the story trail threads are displayed, but
selection of one of the stories by tapping on one of the associated
icons at the bottom of the screen brings up the introduction page
for that story and alters the map image to display only the trail
associated with that story.
Each story is introduced with a brief overview of the author.
Selection of the Map option at the top of the screen will display
the trail associated with this story.
Fig 4: Screen Shot: Hidden Stories – example of a
story/author introduction, An Imperial Typewriter. Apple
iPad version
The white marker signifies the starting point for the story and
although there are no direct instructions to do so there is an
assumption that the visitor will position themselves at this
location to read the first chapter.
25
Fig 5: Screen Shot: Hidden Stories – example of a story trail,
An Imperial Typewriter. Apple iPad version
The first chapter is displayed on the screen when the user taps on
the white start icon. Different stories are presented in different
ways as follows:
An Imperial Typewriter uses a courier type font, presumably to
signify the fact that this story is about a typewriter. Each chapter
is prefixed with a hand-drawn animated graphic image. In this
example you can see the main character’s hands.
Fig 6: Screen Shot: Hidden Stories – example of a chapter
from An Imperial Typewriter. Apple iPad version
Throughout the text there are various additional animations, such
as scrolling text to mimic the keys of a typewriter.
Crow Step also uses a courier type font and each chapter starts
with an animated bird’s head. The unique feature of these poems
is that the text is animated to appear on the screen as if it is being
typed.
Fig 7: Screen Shot: Hidden Stories – example of a chapter
from Crow Step. Apple iPad version
For the Love of Something is presented as a play with stage
directions and dialogue. The font is sans serif with capitalisation
for character names and staging notes.
Fig 8: Screen Shot: Hidden Stories – example of a chapter
from For the Love of Something. Apple iPad version
26 Love the Life You Live, Live the Life You Love. This is the only
story to contain photographs from the area. The text is presented
in a sans serif font and the background constantly changes colour,
graduating though a full spectrum of shades.
Fig 9: Screen Shot: Hidden Stories – example of a chapter
from Love the Life You Live, Live the Life You Love. Apple
iPad version
Marginalia uses a courier type font and an animated number at
the start of each chapter. These chapters are comparatively long
in relation to the other stories on the app.
Fig 10: Screen Shot: Hidden Stories – example of a chapter
from Marginalia. Apple iPad version
Users can choose to read chapters in any order they wish from
the chapters screen
Fig 11: Screen Shot: Hidden Stories – example of a chapter
list from An Imperial Typewriter. Apple iPad version
Technical issues
Prior to running the study a short assessment was made of the
app to identify any potential technical difficulties which might
affect the visitor experience. Further issues were also identified
during the site trails. Fundamentally the app works well,
however there are a few technical issues:
• The android version does not have a ‘pinch’ function
which means it is not possible to resize the map,
making the map difficult to read and use.
• The text for the play, For The Love of Something
intermittently disappears and in some places the
dialogue does not link with the character making it
impossible to fully understand this story.
METHODOLOGY
Research process The research was conducted through a series of site visits which
occurred between August and November 2015. The researcher
attended all visits and, with the exception of one, accompanied
the whole group and observed their behaviour.
Prior to the visits all participants completed a pre visit
questionnaire. This was to gauge their initial thoughts on the
Cultural Quarter and their relationship with the area and with
history in general. Technical expertise and confidence in using
app technology was also benchmarked.
27 All groups were briefed at the start of each visit. The overall
context of the apps was described with a brief explanation of their
development and the associated Affective Digital Histories
research project. Participants were provided with a short
demonstration of how to use the app and the researcher ensured
that all participants knew how to use the app before they
embarked on their visit. It was made clear that this project was
looking at the impact the apps had on the participants’ emotional
reaction to and their engagement with the Cultural Quarter. The
known technical inadequacies, as outlined in 2.3.3 and 2.4.3
above, were explained to the group, that is; the inaccuracy of the
GPS, the incompleteness of some of the stories and the difference
between i-phone and android performance, so that these issues
did not distract the participants more that was necessary. A short
overview of the Cultural Quarter was provided to ensure that the
participants understood which area they were exploring.
All groups/participants were asked to use the apps as a guide to
the area, to imagine that they had just arrived in Leicester, that
they had downloaded the app and were now going to use it to
help them explore.
Post visit all participants were invited to complete a post visit
questionnaire providing details on their emotional reactions and
their engagement. Questions also covered the usability of the
app. Having completed the questionnaires all participants were
invited to participate in either a semi-structured group interview
or group discussion during which the researcher was able to
further explore reactions to the visit and the ways in which the
participants had used the app to enhance their visit.
Research design The research comprised of three key stages of data gathering: pre
visit, visit and post visit.
Pre-Visit. Prior to the visit participants were asked to rank the
their
• interest in history
• interest in local Leicester history
• knowledge of local Leicester history
• interest in the Cultural Quarter
• knowledge of the Cultural Quarter
They were asked what they knew about either the area or the apps
and they were invited to write down their thoughts about the
Cultural Quarter. Participants were also asked to rank their
competence and confidence in using digital technology.
The Affective Digital Histories Project team were interested in
ascertaining the affective value of the apps and to achieve this
the Geneva Emotion Wheel (GEW) (Scherer, 2005) was used to
capture how people felt about the Cultural Quarter prior to and
after, their visit. This model was selected as it haa a user-friendly
graphical form making it simple and straight forward to use. The
interval scaling allows systematic assessment of the intensity of
feeling which lends itself to statistical processing.
Participants were asked to rank the intensity with which they felt
each listed emotion. Information was collected using the GEW
diagram in which the intensity of the emotion is represented by a
series of expanding circles radiating from a central point. The
larger the circle and the further away from the central point the
more intensely the emotion is felt. The emotions measured were:
interest, amusement, pride, joy, pleasure, contentment, love,
admiration, relief, compassion, sadness, guilt, regret, shame,
disappointment, fear, disgust, contempt, hate and anger.
Fig 12: The Geneva Emotion Wheel
This wheel was adapted to measure engagement. For this activity
the descriptors used were: interested, curious, understanding,
liked, empathetic, enjoyed, satisfied, inspired, involved, active,
attentive, attracted, absorbed, passive, alienated, disconnected,
dissatisfied, dislike, confused and bored. These descriptors were
identified by the researcher as those which were most associated
with engagement.
Post-Visit. Following the visit participants were asked to say
how much the visit had increased the following using the options
of ‘not at all’, ‘a little’ or ‘a lot’:
• interest in history,
• interest in local Leicester history,
• knowledge of local Leicester history,
• interest in the Cultural Quarter,
• and knowledge of the Cultural Quarter.
Participants were asked if they would:
• visit the Cultural Quarter again,
• recommend visiting the Cultural quarter to others,
• recommend using the app to others,
• use the app again,
• or look for other heritage apps which they could use in
other locations.
Participants were asked to provide written commentary, using the
post visit questionnaire, on the following:
• their thoughts about the Cultural Quarter,
• what they had learned about the Cultural Quarter
(through using the app),
• what they found most interesting about their visit,
• what they enjoyed most about their visit,
• in what ways the app make their visit more engaging,
interesting or fun,
• what they liked about the app,
• what they disliked about the app,
• and their suggestions as to how the app might be
improved and how the app could be developed to make
them more engaged with the Cultural Quarter.
28 Participants were again asked to complete the GEW and the
engagement wheel and were offered the opportunity of seeing
their original responses for comparison.
The final part of the research process was a group interview
discussion during which several of the issues addressed in the
questionnaire were explored in further depth including:
• their approach to using the app,
• how effective the app was as a guide,
• what the visit might have been like without the app,
• and their favourite part of the visit.
Data set
The project has produced both quantitative and qualitative data
as outlined here:
Statistical data
• Relationship with the Cultural Quarter including future
intentions to visit and impact on interest in and
knowledge of the area.
• Relationship with history and local history.
• Measures of impact on emotional response to the
Cultural Quarter.
• Measures of impact on engagement with the Cultural
Quarter.
• Usability.
• Future usage of the apps.
Qualitative data
• Positive and negative reactions to the apps.
• Design improvements for the apps.
• Commentary on engagement, enjoyment, interest and
knowledge in relation to the Cultural Quarter.
RESULTS
Visit Profile
A total of 16 visits were conducted between August and the end
of December 2015. Group sizes ranged from one to 23 although
the typical group size was between two and four and larger
groups split into smaller sets of between three and six people.
Visit duration was typically 45 minutes to an hour. Participants
was given complete freedom to take as long or as shorter time as
they wanted for the visit. Weather conditions varied considerably
from very hot to wet and cold and whilst none of these conditions
were ideal the participants were not distracted or deterred by the
weather.
Fig 13: The smallest study group
Fig 14: The largest study group
Participant Profile
A total of 48 people took part in the study. 92% used the Sounds
of the Cultural Quarter app, 52% used the Hidden Stories app
and 44% used both apps. 60% of the participants were female,
40% male. 29% of the participants were local residents and 60%
were from overseas
Fig 15: Participant age profile (shown in percentages)
Ages ranged from 12-16 to 65-65 with the majority, 65% being
in the 22-35 age group.
29
Fig 16: Examples of the study participants
Relationship with the Cultural Quarter
Future visits to the Cultural Quarter
89% of those using Sounds of the Cultural Quarter and 92% of
those using Hidden Stories said that they would visit the Cultural
Quarter again. More than 80% of participants said that they
would recommend the area to others although the associated
commentary would suggest that the attraction was more to do
with the leisure facilities such as the bars, theatre and cinema than
the heritage or the apps.
Changes to the level of interest in the Cultural Quarter
91% of those using Sounds of the Cultural Quarter and 76% of
those using Hidden Stories reported an increase in their level of
interest in the Cultural Quarter, although most said it had
increased ‘a little’ with just over 21% saying it had increased ‘a
lot’.
Fig 17: increase in interest in Cultural Quarter (shown in
percentages)
Changes to the level of knowledge of the Cultural Quarter
61% using Sounds of the Cultural Quarter and 50% using
Hidden Stories reported an increase in their knowledge with only
11% and 17% respectively saying that their knowledge had
increased ‘a lot’.
Fig 18: increase in knowledge of the Cultural Quarter (shown
in percentages
Relationship with history and local history
Changes to the level of interest in history
79% using Sounds of the Cultural Quarter and 54% using
Hidden Stories reported an increase in their knowledge however
only a little over 10% said that their knowledge had increased ‘a
lot’ and 46% of those using Hidden Stories said that the app had
not increased their interest in history at all. It should be noted
that most participants were already significantly interested in
history so it might be unrealistic to expect much increase in their
current levels from this experience.
Fig 19: increase in level of interest in history (shown in
percentages)
Changes to level of interest in local Leicester history
91% of those using Sounds of the Cultural Quarter indicated an
increase of interest in local Leicester history with 34% saying it
had increased ‘a lot’. 71% of those using the Hidden Stories app
reported an increase in interest, with 21% reporting this as ‘a lot’.
30
Fig 20: increase in level of interest in local Leicester history
(shown in percentages)
Changes to the level of knowledge of local Leicester history
64% using Sounds of the Cultural Quarter reported an increase
in knowledge of local Leicester history although only 9%
reported this as high. 46% of those using Hidden Stories reported
no change in their knowledge with 54% saying that they had
learned ‘a little’. No one using this app said they had learned ‘a
lot’.
Fig 21: increase in level of knowledge in local Leicester
history (shown in percentages)
Measures of impact on emotional response to the Cultural
Quarter
Using the Geneva Emotion Wheel to gauge emotional response
to the Cultural Quarter before and after the visit produced the
following measures of movement.
Sounds of the Cultural Quarter
No movement – majority response. Of the 20 emotions 13
showed a majority response, of between 51% and 74%, of no
change. These emotions were (in descending order) ‘anger’
74%, ‘hate’ 74%, ‘shame’ 72%, ‘disgust’ 70%, guilt 70%,
‘contempt’ 67%, ‘regret’ 65% , ‘compassion’ 63%, ‘fear’ 60%,
‘sadness’ 58%, ‘pride’ 56%, ‘relief’ 56%, ‘love’ 51%
No movement. A further 2 emotions showed the largest number
of responses, as opposed to the majority, as no change. These
emotions were ‘joy’ 47% and ‘disappointment’ 47%.
Positive movement. Two emotions showed a majority response
in positive movement with an increase in intensity reported for
‘interest’ 58% and ‘pleasure’ 56%. A further two emotions
showed a significant increase in intensity: ‘amusement’ 47% and
‘admiration’ 44%. ‘Contentment’ had an equal figure of 42% for
both no change and positive increase.
Fig 22: Movement in intensity for emotions: Sounds of the
Cultural Quarter (shown in percentages)
Hidden Stories
No change. Of the 20 emotions 13 showed a majority response,
of between 54% and 75%, of no change. These emotions were
(in descending order) ‘guilt’ 75%, ‘shame’ 75%, ‘disgust’ 71%,
‘hate’ 71%, ‘regret’ 71%, ‘anger’ 63%, ‘compassion’ 63%,
‘contempt’ 63%, ‘relief’ 63%, ‘admiration’ 58%, ‘pride’ 58%,
‘fear’ 54%, ‘love’ 54%.
No movement. A further 3 emotions showed the largest number
of responses, as opposed to the majority, as no change. These
emotions were ‘sadness’ 50%, ‘pleasure’ 50% and ‘joy’ 42%.
Positive movement. One emotion showed a majority response
in positive movement with an increase in intensity reported for
‘amusement’ 54%. Two emotions showed a significant increase
in intensity: ‘interest’ 46% and ‘admiration’ 43%. ‘Contentment’
had an equal figure of 42% for both no change and positive
increase.
31 Negative Movement. One emotion showed a majority response
of a decrease in intensity, ‘disappointment’ 38%
Fig 23: Movement in intensity for emotions: Hidden Stories
(shown in percentages)
General observations for both apps
The majority of emotions showing no change were
predominantly the negative emotions whereas those emotions
showing an increase in intensity were positive emotions.
Although the majority of emotions largely recorded no change as
the highest response from participants where movement did
occur this was usually an increase in intensity. The exceptions
to this were ‘fear’ and ‘contempt’ which both registered a slight
decrease in intensity
Measures of impact on engagement with the
Cultural Quarter
Sounds of the Cultural Quarter
Positive movement – majority response. Of the 20 engagement
descriptors four showed a majority response of an increase in
intensity with this descriptor was felt. These descriptors in
descending order were ‘enjoyed’ 57%, ‘understanding’ 52%,
‘absorbed’ 52% and ‘bored’ 52%.
Positive movement – largest response. Ten descriptors
recorded a largest response as an increase in intensity. These
descriptors were, in decreasing order, ‘liked’ 50%, ‘involved’
50%, ‘interested’ 48%, ‘confused’ 48%, ‘satisfied’ 45%,
‘attentive’45%, ‘attracted’ 43%, ‘inspired’ 43%, ‘curious’ 40%,
and ‘passive’ 40%.
No movement – majority response. Two descriptors recorded
a largest response of no movement. These were, ‘alienated’ 52%
and ‘dislike’ 52%.
No movement – largest response. Four descriptors recorded a
largest response of no movement. These descriptors were, in
decreasing order, ‘empathetic’ 48%, ‘dissatisfied’ 48%, ‘active’
45%, and ‘disconnected’ 38%.
Fig 24: Movement in intensity for engagement descriptors:
Sounds of the Cultural Quarter (shown in percentages)
Hidden Stories
Positive movement – majority response. Of the 20 engagement
descriptors seven showed a majority response of an increase in
intensity with which the descriptor was felt. These descriptors
were, in decreasing order, ‘liked’ 67%, ‘absorbed’ 63%,
32 ‘satisfied’ 58%, ‘understanding’ 58%, ‘interested’ 54%,
‘enjoyed’ 54% and ‘involved’ 54%.
Positive movement – largest response. Two descriptors
recorded the largest response as an increase in intensity with
which they were felt. These descriptors were ‘curious’ 50% and
‘attracted’ 42%.
No movement – largest response. 11 descriptors recorded a
largest response of no movement in intensity with which this
descriptor was felt. These descriptors were, in decreasing order,
‘bored’ 50%, ‘dislike’ 50%, ‘dissatisfied’ 50%, ‘disconnected’
50%, ‘alienated’ 50%, ‘attentive’ 50%, ‘inspired’ 50%,
‘empathetic’ 50%, ‘active’ 46%, ‘passive’ 42% and ‘confused’
38%. ‘Passive’ recorded an equal score of 42% for both no
change and a decrease in intensity.
Fig 25: Movement in intensity for engagement descriptors:
Hidden Stories (shown in percentages)
General observations for both apps
The scores for both increase and decreasing intensity are quite
high and whilst the overall results provide a picture of the largest
numbers of response these are rarely the majority and significant
numbers of participants expressed change in one direction or the
other. For example, whilst 50% of the Hidden Stories
participants recorded no change in the intensity with which they
experienced ‘alienation’ and ‘disconnection’, 33% reported a
decrease.
Usability The System Usability Scale (SUS) was used to measure
participant perceptions of the usability of each app. To identify
the SUS score participants are asked to rate 10 items on a 1-5
scale. After calculating average scores for each item the overall
SUS usability score is obtained by using the following formula:
2.5 ∗ ∑5
𝑖= 1((𝑆2𝑖 − 1) + (5 − 𝑆2𝑖))
Where S1 to S10 are the average scores for item 1 to 10 of the
scale. SUS scores range from 0 to 100 with scores of less than 50
considered unacceptable and scores of 70 or over acceptable.
Scores between 50 and 70 are regarded as marginal.
Sounds of the Cultural Quarter scored 65.70 and Hidden Stories
scored 68.23 placing both apps in the high marginal range.
The more negative features of the apps were considered to be the
frequency with which participants felt they would use the app
and how well the various functions were integrated. The
frequency of use is further considered in paragraph 4.8 below and
additional comment on the functionality of the apps is covered in
paragraph 4.9.
Future usage of the apps
Just over 50% of those using the apps said that they would look
for heritage apps which they could use in other locations. 52%
would use the Sounds of the Cultural Quarter app again but only
44% would use Hidden Stories again. 59% would recommend
Sounds of the Cultural Quarter to others and 52% would
recommend Hidden Stories to others. Only 8% said they would
use either app frequently, however, it is worth noting that the
nature of these apps means that they are intended more for a one
off experience than repeated usage.
Connecting with the area through using the
apps
Comments made by those using the Sounds of the Cultural
Quarter app indicated a real and genuine connection with the
area and that, for most, the app facilitated greater empathy and
depth of appreciation. “It’s a diverse mix of old Leicester and
new Leicester – not ignoring one in favour of the other. The app
tried to capture that balance and cultural history” (participant
comment). A number of key themes emerged from these
comments, the most common being that people found the area
and the app interesting. A significant number of comments were
made about the history, heritage and memories associated with
the area and buildings featured strongly, with reference to the
modern, the old and the beautiful. One participant described the
Cultural Quarter as “a gem of tightly packed historically
interesting and aesthetically pleasing buildings”. Diversity was
mentioned with reference to the then and now, the juxtaposition
of the underdeveloped and overdeveloped elements, modern and
posh buildings. An awareness of the historical transition of the
area is demonstrated, with comments on the past and the present,
the change in building usage and functionality. Cultural aspects
33 were identified with references to music, bars, social clubs and
discos, both current and from the past. Thoughts on the Cultural
Quarter refer to its vibrancy, both now and in the past with
comments on it being a lively place with a living community and
various functions.
The Hidden Stories app similarly increased appreciation of the
Cultural Quarter, again with mention of the buildings,
architecture and vibrancy. Those using the Hidden Stories app
also mentioned the lives of the people who used to live, work and
visit the area.
Learning about the Cultural Quarter
Participants learned something from using each app, although
this acquisition of knowledge was limited and didn’t always
satisfy the visitors’ curiosity to know more.
When asked what they had learned about the Cultural Quarter
from using the Sounds of the Cultural Quarter app the largest
response was that they knew a little more about the history.
Buildings featured significantly, with people saying that they
now knew where certain things were located and that they had
learned a little about current building usage, usually by looking
at them, and a little about their past industrial use. Comments
were made about the range and diversity of buildings and their
functions; the church, the factories, the public baths and the
police station being the most commonly mentioned examples. A
small number of comments were made about changes to the area,
such as immigration, and how this reflected changes in British
society.
The Hidden Stories app enabled some learning, providing an idea
as to the industrial heritage of the area. Those using the An
Imperial Typewriter story described a sense of empathy with the
immigrant workers of the 1970s and an interest in the industrial
unrest which they had previously not known, “it helped me
empathise with the man in the typewriter story – vivid contrast of
rainy hopeless frustrating Leicester and warm beautiful vibrant
Uganda” (participant comment). This reported slight increase in
knowledge should be balanced with the numbers of participants
who felt they had learned very little and would have preferred a
closer, more obvious, connection between the story and the area
in order to make this a more satisfying learning experience.
Interesting aspects of the Cultural Quarter
The buildings and the architecture, both modern and Victorian,
were the most frequently mentioned aspects of the area which
interested those using the apps. Specific reference was made to
the church, Curve and the Indian Temple by those using the
Sounds of the Cultural Quarter app and a significant number
found the live music interesting and evocative. People
commented on the connection between the old sounds and the
new buildings and how this created a sense of disappearing
communities and transition. The sounds “help visitors feel more
like they are back in the past. Like the sounds make them be able
to imagine how this areas looks like in the past” (participant
comment). There is evidence that the app made visitors take more
notice of things, such as side streets, that they have not previously
seen and encouraged “looking around at the buildings as I
usually don’t take the time to as I’m usually just passing through”
(participant comment).
This was also true of the Hidden Stories app where the prescribed
story routes “carried you from factory to factory and therefore
industry to industry”, “even though I went to the Cultural
Quarter before I had never noticed this church. Due to the app,
I realise how big the Cultural Quarter actually is” (participant
comments).
Enjoying the Visit Experience
There was good evidence that those using either app enjoyed
aspects of their visit. Exploring the area, walking outside,
wandering down back streets and getting lost in unchartered
areas provided enjoyment as did the opportunity to interact with
others, sharing memories or discussing the past. The music in the
Sounds of the Cultural Quarter app was demonstratively
enjoyable as many visitors began ‘dancing’ when they heard the
sound clips of the Leicester Caribbean Centre or the Palais de
Dance. Questionnaire comments confirmed this. People said that
they enjoyed the sensory activities of listening and looking and
some mentioned the element of surprise as new and unexpected
sounds were played, “when I entered the church garden, I heard
mystery music, kind of crystal music, it’s really engaging”
(participant comment).
Some participants liked the prescribed route provided by the
Hidden Stories app and when the stories linked directly to the
buildings enjoyment of the area was enhanced. Interaction with
others, such as reading to each other, discussing the characters,
trying to work out the context of the poems and even acting out
the play contributed to amusement and fun. People enjoyed the
texts, the author descriptions and looking at the area through the
eyes of another.
Engaging with the Cultural Quarter
The Sounds of the Cultural Quarter app engaged participants
through various features. The sounds themselves made people
curious and the limited amount of provided interpretation led
visitors to question and wonder, making them more active, rather
than passive, in the process of their own interpretation of the area.
The sounds brought the area to life and made the inaccessible
accessible, such as being able to hear inside the Leicester
Mercury offices. Participants used their imagination to create
their own understandings of what they were hearing, it “makes
you look around, makes you question what you are listening to.
It is definitely engaging. It is interesting. Makes you wonder
many things” (participant comment). The app also provided
purpose and a route for the visitor as they were motivated to listen
to the sounds, which they found interesting and use this to
explore the location in a semi structured way. The element of fun
also engaged the visitor, “the sounds were able to provide a real
experience and feeling of the era. Frankly the application was
both engaging and fun” (participant comment).
34
The route was also an important aspect in the Hidden Stories app
and the chance to link the stories to the buildings, location and
the human aspect was significant, “the app gave me a chance to
connect to some of the buildings I had in front of me. Narrating
the story of the main character, I could understand some of the
characteristics of industrial Leicester” (participant comment).
The quality of the writing engaged some of the participants, “the
story I picked was so well written, funny, apt, pithy, and quotable
that you want to keep moving, both physically and through the
chapters to see what came next”, “good personal story of an
immigrant – really helped me imaging the district as a working
area. Helped me see the factories as they once were” (participant
comments).
Reactions to the app
Positive reactions to Sounds of the Cultural Quarter app
Participants were very positive about the overall design of the
app. They found the user interface aesthetically pleasing and
described the app as simple and easy to use. The option to choose
between past and present sounds was well received and people
liked the locative functions, the way in which the app switched
sound clips automatically and could fade and overlap sounds
according to where they were. This provided an explicit
connection to the site and a context which people valued.
Participants were positive about the sound clips in terms of the
selection and quality. The music clips were particularly popular
for being both fun and evocative. Visitors liked the immersive
nature of the experience, commenting on the emotiveness of the
sounds, “I felt like I travelled to the past but back to reality next
second” (participant comment).
Negative reactions to Sounds of the Cultural Quarter app
Insufficient information was the major complaint about this app.
People didn’t always know what they were listening to, why this
sound had been selected for inclusion in the app, which building
or period it belonged to or how this sound was relevant to the
area. Technical issues, such as the accuracy of the GPS, the
slowness of response and concerns about battery and data usage
were also reported by participants as something they didn’t like.
The inability to zoom the screen on the android version made the
map virtually unusable and the lack of background functionality
meant that the app stopped working when the screen switched
off. A number of visitors were confused by the app, some didn’t
know how to use it or what it was supposed to do, some found
the map difficult to navigate, partly due to the lack of street
names, and some found the circles distracting. Changing the
colour of a circle to green to signify current location resulted in
some people being unsure as to whether they were listening to
sounds of the past or present. Some found that focussing on the
screen disconnected them from their environment, stopped them
looking at and engaging with their local surroundings and
potentially making the experience unsafe, “it is difficult to be
attentive to the sounds and still be fully aware of your
surroundings eg: on-coming traffic” (participant comment)
Positive reactions to the Hidden Stories app
The most attractive element of the Hidden Stories app was the
nature and quality of the creative writing, people liked the story
telling and poetry. The visual design was generally popular, with
easy navigation of the screens and novel use of animated text and
illustrations. The hand drawn map was visually pleasing and
functional and people particularly liked the prescribed routes and
subsequent movement they had to undertake around the area.
Negative reactions to Hidden Stories app
The overwhelming frustrations of the Hidden Stories app were
with the technical issues which meant that some of the texts were
not usable for this project. This is dealt with in paragraphs 2.4.3
and 4.16. Lack of connection with the area led to confusion
among the participants as to why they had been directed to a
particular place to read a chapter with no obvious link to that
location. Some disliked reading on their phones, finding the text
too long to read outside. Some felt that actively concentrating on
their phones disconnected them from their surroundings, they
missed seeing significant examples of heritage due to their focus
on their phone. Others spoke about the safety aspects of walking
round without due attention to immediate surroundings and
potential dangers of traffic and theft. The animated text had a
mixed reaction, with some disliking the slowness of the scrolling
text so much that they wouldn’t read that particular story. Some
of the stories were considered to be too complicated and
incomprehensible to certain visitors. Likewise the adult nature
of some content made certain stories inappropriate for younger
audiences.
Design improvements for the apps
Suggestions for improving the Sounds of the Cultural Quarter
app included the following:
• more detailed information, more history, more about
the buildings, more context for the sound clips and
more stories about the people who lived and worked in
the area,
• include visual images, particularly photographs, so
visitors can confirm which building was associated
with the sound and provide a picture of the past
• layer information, and allow users to choose different
sounds and explore further details as desired,
• include personal user options, for example the ability
to disable the overlapping sound feature,
• improve the technical functionality, more accurate
location awareness and the ability to work in the
background,
• include a brief introduction, with clear instructions of
how to get started,
• and introduce interactivity, for example, allow users to
record and contribute their own sounds, comments and
thoughts on the area would encourage some to engage
more with the Cultural Quarter.
Suggestions for improving the Hidden Stories app strongly
recommend the following:
35
• add sound in the form of narration and additional
supporting sound clips. Having the story read out was
the most suggested improvement,
• connect more closely to the location, both in the
narrative of the text and with supporting material about
the history of the site,
• include more real life historical tales,
• include visual images and photos of buildings, both to
enhance the story telling and to provide confirmation
of location for the user,
• include more stories and more routes, perhaps with
some puzzles and mysteries,
• allow more personalisation, allow users to change text
display, turn on audio commentary,
• add optional layers of information including
references,
• and make the blocks of text shorter and more
comprehensible.
Limitations of the Research Project
Participant Representation. Ideally participants for this
research project would have represented the typical intended
audience for these apps, however identifying this audience was
difficult; are they tourists, locals or regular visitors to the area?
The Cultural Quarter is not an easily recognised, discrete or
identifiable visitor destination. Unlike other heritage locations
in Leicester, such as the Castle, New Walk Museum or the
Cathedral the Cultural Quarter does not have an obvious
association with heritage. Consequently it was not possible to
select participants from people at the location as they may not
have been visitors and their reasons for being in the area might
not have been to explore the culture or heritage and they may not
have been interested in using the app. To achieve a statistically
significant study group a range of people were invited to take part
in the project, some of whom were local and some of whom were
not. The largest groups were drawn from MA students at the
departments of Museum Studies, University of Leicester and
Digital Design, De Montfort University, many of whom were
from overseas and the majority of whom were unfamiliar with
Leicester. This group may skew some of the results in terms of
increasing knowledge and interest in the area since the starting
point for many was often nil. It was noticeable that the local
Leicester participants were often less impressed with the Cultural
Quarter as an area than the students, however this negativity did
not translate into overall research results as the local group was
smaller. Further research with local participants is needed to
ascertain the impact that these apps might have on people who
are already familiar with this area. Likewise it would be
interesting to see if these apps can engage people who have little
interest in history or heritage.
Hidden Stories: Limited Story Options. Most of the visits using
Hidden Stories app used the same story which could result in
findings which are unrepresentative of the app as a whole.
Unfortunately only two of the texts were suitable to use in the
project, The Imperial Typewriter and Crow Step. Technical
issues with For the Love of Something resulted in the story being
unreadable and the length, and for some people the complexity
of the language of Marginalia meant that this story was rarely
selected. Only a portion of Love the Life You Live, Live the Life
You Love is included in the app effectively rendering this text
unsuitable for the study. For a complete assessment of this app
further study, focussed on these stories, is required to ascertain if
their impact on engagement would be any different.
The Geneva Emotion Wheel. Two issues arose with the use of
this tool for measuring movement in emotion. Participants often
found the descriptors confusing and would seek clarity. Several
found it difficult to initially benchmark their emotions, which
may have led to a number erroneously registering ‘none’ as their
starting point. Additionally a large portion of the study group
genuinely had no knowledge of the area prior to the project and
so also registered ‘none’ as their starting point. The high numbers
of those registering ‘none’ might adversely skew the movement
of emotional intensity in a positive rather than negative direction.
INSIGHTS Findings
Returning to the original research question, this project set out to
establish:
• the extent to which the use of the mobile app, on
location, impacts visitor engagement with the heritage
site, and
• the extent to which the use of the mobile app, on
location, impacts the emotional response of the visitor
to the heritage site?
The first finding from this study is that both these apps did have
an impact on both engagement and emotional response. In terms
of engagement we can see that these apps provided visitors with
a purpose and reason for visiting the location, they provided
some sense of a route to explore the area, they encouraged people
to slow down as they walked around, to take note of things and
to look at buildings and streets. Both apps encouraged curiosity
and inspired people with interest and, in some cases, a desire to
return to the area for further visits. Visitors said that their
experiences were fun, the apps helped them to recall experiences
and talk to others. For some there was the opportunity to
discover things they didn’t know, for others the chance to
reminisce.
There is strong evidence that both apps could be improved to
increase their capacity to engage visitors with the area. Increased
content, improved context, closer relationship to the physical
location, more details, pictures, images and other multimedia
were all examples of things people wanted more of. In terms of
design more layering, increased opportunities to personalise,
more interactivity and the facilitation of user contribution to the
app content were key suggestions for to improving both apps.
Whilst this is interesting it confirms much of what is already
known about good mobile app design (Heritage Lottery Fund,
2013).
36 Perhaps more illuminating is the underlying inference that
participants consider engagement to be predominantly about
learning, and that a successful engaging experience is one which
teaches the visitor and develops their knowledge. The results of
this study would suggest that people overwhelming want more
historical information, context and content, even though
reference to other measures of engagement, such as enjoyment,
interest and fun were clearly made throughout the project.
Although participants agreed that their interest and curiosity in
the area was significantly raised they considered this to be
insufficient, on its own, to fully engage them. Unless the raised
level of interest is supported by the supply and subsequent
acquisition of knowledge the overall experience is perceived as
being less satisfying. The visitor becomes frustrated,
disappointed and ultimately loses motivation and interest.
Having fun and enjoying the experience, with this group of
participants at least, appears to be less important than learning
and only one or two suggested that adding gamification to these
apps would have increased their engagement.
The learning point for project managers and app designers is
clear: if you want your app to engage your audience include
plenty of opportunities for them to learn as much as they need,
through the provision of layered multimedia content.
It is difficult to reach any conclusions regarding the extent to
which the visitors’ emotional reaction to the area was affected by
the use of either app as the responses have resulted in a broad set
of data within which there are few significant trends. It is
possible to conclude that there is more increase in the intensity
with which visitors felt emotions than decrease and that those
with no previous experience of the area experienced an increase
in their positive emotional responses. There is a possible trend,
although the data set is small, regarding the emotional responses
of those who already have knowledge and experience of the area,
in as much as the younger participants, with less of a knowledge
of the pre-Cultural Quarter reported an increase in their positive
response to the area, whereas those with longer memories who
were less disposed to liking the area before the visit were either
confirmed in their view or felt even more negative about it after
their visit. There are opportunities here for further research into
the capacity of mobile apps to influence the hearts and minds of
those who would approach heritage from a negative or
disengaged view point. Could a mobile app be successful in
changing people’s predisposed negativity about an area, or would
that be a step too far? If a mobile apps could be developed to
positively impact on emotional response this could be a powerful
tool for many projects.
Next Steps and Further Research
As a result of this project a number of new questions have arisen:
• Can mobile phone apps change hearts and minds?
There is evidence here that apps can increase
emotional reaction for those who knew nothing about
the area, but what is the potential for altering the
emotions of those who already have a connection?
• Is there a ‘hierarchy of requirements’ for genuine
engagement with a heritage site through digital
media? For example, is ‘learning’ more important than
‘fun’ and ‘amusement’? Is one a pre-requisite of the
other?
• Can improved project management increase the
capacity of these apps to engage? From scoping the
project, setting the objectives, designing the product
and promoting the app is there opportunity to improve
the overall management of these projects to take more
account of the needs, requirements and expectations of
the end user/visitor?
The next phase of my PhD is to take the learning from this
experience and create a prototype product to test whether the
improvement of the project planning and the inclusion of the
various design aspects identified in this project can be used to
create an app which can significantly increase visitor
engagement with a heritage site and provide an appropriately
satisfying and engaging experience.
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