Attractions and visitors

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Heritage sites can be good, powerful and human places to encounter and understand the important people and events that have shaped a country’s past and present. I believe they have a particularly important  role for international visitors. I have been immensely blessed to work regularly in Ireland over the last four years.  I have fallen […]

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There are lots of ways to have a great visit to a heritage site. There are many  types of good times to be found at old places, wild places, holy places, places of memorial, places of bloodshed, places of art, places of story.  There are different sorts of heritageand many different visits. Probably as many […]

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We’ll all seen them, heritage attractions that seem to be trying to do the reverse of attracting.  They do things that will actively discourage visitors. If you want fewer visitors you could learn from their example.  (If, on the other hand, you would like more and happier first time visitors go straight to the end of this […]

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“I don’t get it, what does it mean?’ That’s a question I am pretty familiar with.  But this time it wasn’t me asking about The Matrix, the error message on my screen, or the  ‘WUU2’ text or equivalent from my daughter. This time it was overheard in an exhibition of contemporary art; in the Anthony Gormley exhibition in […]

How to revive a heritage attraction – five steps to success

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Great visitor experiences at heritage attractions do not happen by accident. Just over three years ago Peter, my partner in TellTale, was asked to advise the Irish National Heritage Park in County Wexford, Ireland. He found a fascinating site, a team with great passion and belief running a severely underfunded, tired attraction. The vision seemed to […]

A dark tourism case study: The Museum of Torture, San Giminiano

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The big questions are ‘why?’ Why is this museum of horrors here, in this most gorgeous of places? Why did I, on this most romantic occasion (we are celebrating a significant-to-us anniversary) decide to visit a Museum of Torture? The second answer is because as I said at the end of my last post, I am both/and. […]

Interpretation to provoke and promote remembrance

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The National Memorial Arboretum, near Lichfield, Shropshire, UK is one of the most interesting places I have worked at (and there’s a lot of competition for positions on that list!). Unusually and interestingly, it is that it is not the material or event history of the place itself that is important here, but the intangible […]

Bosworth Battlefield: a victory for interpretive storytelling

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Over the Bank Holiday weekend I went to Bosworth battlefield and found a new addition to my (imaginary, but not that long) list of really well interpreted places in the UK. It was   a really ‘good day out’,  and a demonstration of how careful interpretation planning  makes that good day look effortless and obvious. […]

TalkTalk’s top 10 UK wildlife tourism sites and nature conservation messages – a mismatch?

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‘Wildlife’.  ‘Nature’.  Do we understand what those words mean? If not, and I think that’s the case, we had better be careful how we use them. A few days ago, somewhat tongue in cheek, I posted my version of the Top Ten UK Wildlife Experiences. Today I Googled that term – and got a lion! […]