Digital Towneley is a digital heritage web application developed as part of my PhD research project. The content of Digital Towneley has been put together by me based on the data co-created with local park users who have agreed to take part in interviews about the park and visits to the park with me. This content is the result of my own interpretation of the stories that the participants have shared with me about the park.

The aims of the project are to explore the ways in which digital heritage changes the interpretation of outdoor heritage. This is focused around the reaction to the developed digital object as well as the effects of the process of digital heritage creation itself. My methodology has been influenced by phenomenological archaeology, grounded theory and heritage approaches (for more on this, click here to see some of my research journal entries). The aims of this approach are to highlight issues of bias and power balances during the development of a digital heritage piece and to engage with some of the intangible heritage meanings associated with the park.

The Digital Towneley project is not “complete” and represents only a fraction of the viewpoints expressed by the participants, whose content in turn represents only a fraction of the meanings that the park generates. The project may also take further shape if further information is added to it. Currently (April 2015) the online content will remain relatively stable as I am now conducting feedback interviews with the participants and leading up over the next five months to a thesis submission.

Click here to load the Digital Towneley web application

[A limited amount of performance testing has been carried out: the best devices for viewing Digital Towneley are iPad 3 and above or desktop and laptop computers.]