Places That We Know was a multi-faceted heritage interpretation and engagement project delivered for the Garnock Connections Landscape Partnership led by the RSPB. Over several years, we worked closely with communities and organisations across North Ayrshire and Renfrewshire to build capacity, co-design interpretation and create practical, digital tools for conserving, exploring and celebrating their heritage. As we discovered, this is an area with a rich history and places of beauty and real environmental significance. Changes in the way we live and work have utterly transformed both the landscape and everyday life countless times. However, it is also home to some of Scotland’s most deprived communities and, unlike other parts of Ayrshire, has not received the attention and investment that its heritage deserves. We have been grateful for the opportunity to work so extensively in the area and work with the community to produce a wide range of physical and digital outputs.
North Ayrshire Council have been so pleased with the impact of Places That We Know that they have adopted it as part of their Heritage offering for the foreseeable future.
Our work commenced with a period of intensive engagement. Over several months we criss-crossed the region: addressing community meetings, running pop-ups stalls, drinking tea in people's houses and making connections with numerous local societies, museums and community workers. We built up an extensive network of contacts, including leaders of other Garnock Connections projects, in order to raise awareness of the project and create opportunities for collaboration.
We were also learning about the area, developing a sense of the themes and stories that define it and shape the ways people live, work and play. Besides in-person engagement, we created an interactive online map and invited people to fill it with memories, facts, myths, wildlife hotspots, etc. We received hundreds of responses, creating a detailed overview of the area and its histories, both shared and personal. Our ‘hands-off’ approach stimulated conversation as people disagreed over precise locations, often learning something new in the process.
Many groups or organisations in the area highlighted the challenge of establishing a digital presence where they could share their work, limited by a lack of skills, funding or both. We attempted to solve this problem by developing an online heritage archive allowing anyone in the community to contribute and connect to a network of shared interest in the area. Users can upload photos, drawings, sounds, videos, documents or 360° images/videos and curate their own virtual exhibitions, allowing anyone to actively participate in conserving and celebrating their local heritage while opening up opportunities for discovery and new connections. We ran training workshops for the archive, inviting local organisations who could incorporate it into their professional work.
The brief outlined the development of a single heritage trail app. However, we applied a more innovative approach in order to produce a more valuable and long-lasting resource for the community. We developed a heritage trail platform spanning a website and mobile app that allows anyone to create their own walking, cycling or wheeling trails enriched with stories, images, sounds, videos or items from the archive. We also built a feedback tool allowing trail creators to be notified about issues on the path. We ran public workshops exploring how to use the app and design an engaging trail. Since the app launched, over 40 trails have been published, with many more in development.
Over the course of the project, we led 14 guided heritage walks in 12 locations, collaborating with local groups, historians and experts to create unique, informal events that explored built, natural and social heritage. During each walk, we gathered further stories and memories from people and added them to the interactive map. We designed the programme to be inclusive, holding events suitable for older people, children and those with physical disabilities.
Drawing upon our engagement and research, we developed a Sense of Place Toolkit for the area: a set of online guides to key locations, including short histories, myths and points of interest. It also explored the themes that link these places and the wider landscape, from Natural Heritage to Manufacture, Craft & Trade. The Toolkit is an open resource for local people, visitors and local businesses/organisations who can adapt and reuse it to support their work.
Places That We Know gave us the opportunity to try something new for icecream: Virtual Reality. We worked with the community through online workshops - during the COVID lockdown - and a digitial survey to co-create a brief for a Virtual Reality film exploring themes from the Sense of Place Toolkit: specifically Prehistoric, Monastic and Mediaeval human settlements.
Collaborating with animator Danny Grant, narrator Sita Iona Pieraccini and composer Luciano Rossi, we produced a short film - Garnock: River of Stories - exploring 5 stories from area:
- St Winning & the River Curse
- The Maid and the Missing Silverware
- Ringan Semple, the Warlock of Peel Island
- The Deil's Hoofprint at Ardrossan Castle
- Cleeves Cove: The Great Court of Elfhame
Ardrossan Castle Heritage Society and Louise Turner from Rathmell Archaeology provided invaluable advice and support when animating several of the buildings in the film that have since been lost to time.
To celebrate the release of the film, we distributed 300 bespoke VR headsets to people across the area at events and workshops.
Throughout the many different strands of this project, we were attempting to crystallise the themes that define the different places in the area and link them together in a shared story. These efforts culminated in the creation of bespoke physical interpretation across the area: 20 droplet sculptures across 12 locations. Each is embedded with an unique design inspired by the stories and history of its location, plus a QR code linking them together via an online sculpture trail map. The sculpture trail is also available as a printed paper map available from locations across the area.