As our final contribution to the Tourism Interpretation Masterplan for Ireland’s National Parks, we have just completed a new toolkit. Sharing the Wild Heart of Ireland: Interpretation guidelines for Ireland’s National Parks is an internal document for National Park staff in the six National Parks. It gives step-by-step advice on how to use the national and local themes from the Masterplan to produce great interpretation on the ground, using the specific character and opportunities of each national park.
The focus is on creating interpretation that will attract and delight modern visitors who are looking for experiences and activity.
This is a tourism-led project, so the emphasis is on international visitors. However, the good practice advocated will benefit domestic visitors too.
‘Sharing the Wild Heart of Ireland’ complements Sharing Our Stories: Using interpretation to improve the visitors’ experience at heritage sites that we produced for Ireland’s Ancient East last year. Sharing our Stories focuses on human heritage and storytelling experiences, the new toolkit deals with natural heritage and creating meaningful experiences of the natural world.
This toolkit shows how developing meaningful experience of nature benefits both conservation, through building understanding of the natural world and conservation issues, and tourism.