by Amber, Jonquil, Pong and Rithika
Motivation: The University estate boasts a good collection of pieces of sculpture, artworks and architectural gems many of which are in publicly available locations or spaces for anyone to enjoy. The institution doesn’t currently have a reference guide or map that pulls together information about these pieces and where they can be found, that would enable staff, students and members of the public to get outdoors, explore the estate and find out more about the history and any interesting facts about the pieces. It would be lovely if we could harness the talent and abilities of our own students to help create such a resource.
Solution: To develop a prototype web-based app, that is mobile friendly, that could contain and present this kind of information for people to have at their fingertips as they explore the campus. There are positives to this project in terms of wellbeing for all audiences - getting outdoors, enhancing a sense of pride and belonging, deepening an understanding of the cultural heritage and contribution of the University to the cultural life of the city, connecting with our wider local communities who we share the city with.
In an ideal world, we would really like it if this app could offer an element of AR interaction when used - so people could hold up their phone to the artwork or its signage that would trigger a link through to rich content about the piece.
Constraints: There will need to be a limit set on how many locations/artworks we can practically include in the initial prototype development. Ideally, we would want there to be flexibility for the app to be developed further, with the ability to add more content/artwork locations in future development cycles.