South Wales Miners Museum – Hidden Heritage Walk

The HLF Cymru funded ‘Hidden Heritage Walk’ is part of the South Wales Miners’ Museum located in Afan Forest, it encourages visitors to not only experience the beautiful Forest Park but learn some of the rich local history along the way.

The walk combines physical signage with digital elements such as videos and PDF’s – we were commissioned to not only supply the physical items, but to develop a solution that would allow users to access the digital components on their mobile devices, without access to the internet.

The walk takes visitors on a journey around a section of the forest with informative panels available at key areas. There are also a number of way finding posts to help with directions.

Being a large Forest access to the internet can be patchy which made it difficult to ensure visitors could access the digital media if simply hosted online. This meant we had to create a localised internet with it’s own hosted website. At the start of the walk is roofed shelter which displays the first panel, hidden within the apex roof of this shelter is a unit which creates this localised hotspot.

This allows visitors to connect via their mobile devices and access a locally hosted Heritage Walk website. This is done by using QR codes or NFC chips installed on every panel – scanning / tapping these elements links directly to the local site once connected.

Once there videos / PDF’s and other information can be accessed. The first panel links to a home page which allows the choice of Welsh or English videos.

Once the language is chosen you can select a video to watch.

A locally hosted website powered by its very own hotspot is the perfect way to ensure all visitors  (as long as they have a a mobile device) can access the digital content available without relying on patchy internet access.

The resulting Heritage Walk combines traditional signage with a modern digital solution to help visitors experience the history of Afan Forest Park as told by those that were there, whilst enjoying the stunning landscape.