Memoryscapes: Designing Situated Narratives of Place through Heritage Collections

Memoryscapes presents a detailed case-study of a design-led inquiry concerning the development of immersive experiences to support city-center urban redevelopment, to encourage visiting and touristic activity. Our approach sought to explore how we might make innovative use of local heritage assets, within these digital experiences, to enhance engagement with place. We brought historians, “placemakers”, design-creatives, and technology-developers into dialogue, in a series of co-design sessions (over 9 months, through 6 workshops and with 77 participants). Our initial workshop allowed us to explore and develop extant theories of trajectories and immersive experiences, which led to the development of a design toolkit. The toolkit facilitated further co-design sessions with stakeholder communities. This paper contributes a deepening and nuancing of theory of trajectories by applying it in a specific context, namely heritage-led immersive experiences for use in urban areas; and provides critical reflections on the design toolkit to support interdisciplinary stakeholder development of immersive urban experiences.