How can innovation encourages creativity and playfulness?

In the first podcast of our "Driving Place-Based Innovation" series in partnership with?NewcastleGateshead Initiative,?we'll talk with The Alnwick Garden to see how they use technology to drive innovation. An international perspective will be provided by the Spanish creative hub eXplorins.

You can listen to the first episode here ??

The Alnwick Garden

The?Alnwick Garden?is a charity in north Northumberland and was opened by the Duchess of Northumberland. It has 12 acres of gardens and one of the main attractions is the Grand Cascade, which is a giant fountain with 120 water jets. The garden encourages playfulness through multi-sensory activities and aims for families to run wild under the motto of "It's Your Garden".

Importance of Technology & Innovation

Innovation requires constant attention. It's important to consider the location and accessibility requirements when planning new initiatives. The Alnwick Garden is home to the world's largest Tai Haku cherry orchard with 329 trees. The cherry trees only blossom for two weeks a year, typically from the end of April to the beginning of May. The Garden receives frequent questions every year about the exact timing of the cherry blossoms from around Christmas and introduced a?Blossom Watch livestream?to show the changing colours, which lets people watch for hours on end. Therefore, technology and innovation can combine well to answer frequent requests from clients and solve your organisation's challenges.

However, The Alnwick Garden has contrasting opinions when it comes to the use of technology. On the one hand, they would like visitors to put their phones away and enjoy the garden and their natural surroundings. However, they would also like to embrace technology to complement the experience. One such example was the development of an Augmented Reality app for the Giants Trail.

The Alnwick Garden was also a flagship project for?Google Arts & Culture?and have developed numerous walkthrough and accessibility videos as well as ASMR in the Ornamental Garden. The Alnwick Garden also added themselves to Google Streetview to share the landscape with those unable to visit. The Garden created 360 accessibility videos from two points of view - those of a wheelchair user and also of their non-wheelchair user partner, highlighting accessibility at the attraction. These initiatives show how technology can benefit attractions in terms of guiding visitors through the attraction and providing reassurances for those with specific needs.

In the Poison Garden - which is the largest in Europe - a QR code system was introduced for each plant, enabling visitors to watch YouTube videos with additional information. This helps to embrace technology without removing the aesthetics of the garden.

Lilidorei Play Park

Lilidorei is a word?created by the Duchess of Northumberland. The idea is to be a space where children come and use their imagination. The project cost ￡15.5 million, partially funded by Borderlands - a rural funding enterprise - and private shareholders. The concept of Lilidorei Play Park is a Christmas-themed Adventure Village, where children make their own adventures, without a predefined narrative or map.

The Lilidorei Play Park will be the world's largest play structure - with 29 metres of slides, walkways and tunnels. The Play Park is centred on nine clans, with an immersive surround sound system and 20 miles of fairy lights. This creates a playful and relaxed environment through light and sound and shows that even simple technological developments can design a strong ambience and enhance visitor experiences.

AR Opportunities

The Alnwick Garden sees the potential usefulness of technology to enhance their community and education programmes. For instance, the Garden has an 'Elderberries' programme for senior citizens over 55 years old - some of whom suffer from dementia. A weekly walking group is offered for this group, but accessibility and mobility issues can pose challenges for some people. The Garden sees the opportunity to use technology to improve inclusivity through an AR/VR world using an Oculus headset, which helps those with mobility issues to fully explore the different sections of the gardens.

eXplorins

eXplorins?is a Creative Hub in Barcelona that develops apps and projects for councils and private companies to market products and services. They create interactive, digital experiences for city dynamisation projects and experiential marketing, where AR art galleries provide an exposition of art to augment visitor experiences. Local culture is used as the starting point for the entire project to achieve triple-bottom-line sustainability.

eXplorins explains that experiences happen in real life, but digital devices and software can augment the experience in new innovative ways. Technology should be seen as merging reality and the digital world together, with technology enhancing real-life experiences.

Creation of Digital Experiences

While urban planning takes time to change the built environment, digital layers enable quick and simple experimentation to try new things. Adding digital layers speeds up the development process and there is also the possibility to add multiple layers of digital interfaces. Technological developments should not be considered as being better than the actual built environment but as a means to help travellers go beyond just their own imagination.

eXplorins' projects tend to be purposeful and developed in altruistic environments. For example, they support the LGBTQ+ community by augmenting their experiences with digital art installations or monuments in public squares during gay pride celebrations.

eXplorins works with new storytellers within communities. They look for people with a specific story to tell who have limited opportunities to implement technology. In this regard, eXplorins provides a bridge between technology and culture (considered as a reflection of modern-day reality). eXplorins' projects help cities and communities achieve local goals by democratising technology to be used for good.

Sustainability & Project Impact

eXplorins put three pillars at the centre of their approach:?technology,?social?and?culture. They have a 3-step process to help visionary brands and companies create their own interactive cultural experiences:

1. Know: Research with the client to understand their goals and the local community.
2. Reimagine: Co-create a narrative to connect the three pillars and produce powerful content to celebrate diversity.
3. Engage: Facilitate the process and use technology as the final channel to create thematic universes, creative applications and gamified experiences.

eXplorins' focus on the triple bottom line and sustainability has resulted in them obtaining?biosphere?and?B-Corp?certifications. They won a 2022 B-Corp Award - "Best For The World"?in the category of Governance - highlighting their leading position in terms of implementing sustainable actions.

The certificates help label the company as taking a leading position in terms of sustainability and enhancing the sense of community. This gives strong signalling to other visionary companies that want to facilitate positive change. Having recognised sustainability certificates makes highlighting purposefulness much easier, enabling an increased focus on actual projects and their outcomes.

It's important to remember that the narrative of city-life reality comes from the community. Society is a public space and everyone has a different story. The key is to get local engagement and support for projects. This involvement helps to promote projects and multiply the benefits.

Hurdles of technology

Technology poses challenges when launching new projects given the high up-front investment required, but it becomes easier once initiated. After the financial obstacle has been overcome, it's easy for projects to be repeated in the future by modifying parameters, without the need to redesign from scratch. This can be facilitated by implementing a modular work approach and reusing coding while ensuring that adjustments are made to achieve specific project goals. Through knowledge from past projects, it's clear to understand technology's limits and capabilities, along with what else can be done in the future - continuously streamlining the development process.

Besides financial obstacles, a key barrier is the conflict between reusing the tech architecture and the desire from clients for customised projects. Companies want to develop new experiences, but don't have the knowledge to create digital experiences. While building all-in-one applications works well for public administration organisations and also benefits from the communication potential of local authorities. However, private companies see branding conflicts. While they like the project content, they want to own the IT system and concept and thereby find brand alignment difficult. This conflict means that they want the project materials to be contained within their own applications or use 3rd party integrations. In some cases, standalone applications are built for the private sector.

Conclusion

Technology has the potential for improving tourist experiences, but purpose is key. Technology shouldn't be viewed as a substitute for real-life experiences, but it can be a vital tool for innovation and augmenting visitor experiences by incorporating elements of playfulness and learning. This can be achieved by using technology for telling stories and to be a medium to interpret things differently. Technology can also help enhance the sense of community and improve inclusivity but needs to take into account the specific circumstances of individual visitor attractions and destinations.

Sustainability is an important consideration that shouldn't be sidelined by new tech developments. Purpose-driven business innovation is key and well-known certification bodies can provide a label that signals and accredits strong performance, helping organisations focus on improving their products and experiences and the economic benefits derived from these.

Experimentation is key to innovating and can be simplified and implemented quickly through the use of technology.