St Paul’s Cathedral launch new multimedia guide for visitors

Throughout 2015 ATS Heritage has been working with St Paul’s Cathedral in London to create a brand new suite of visitor multimedia guides which launch to the public this week.

Anne Fletcher, Interpretation Consultant at St Paul’s Cathedral explains “St Paul’s had come to the end of its 5 year audio guide contract and was keen to test the market to ensure that its new guide would be able to take advantage of the latest multimedia techniques and of the best creative ideas. ATS Heritage was chosen at the end of a competitive tender process to develop a new range of tours for the cathedral and to staff its provision to visitors.

In selecting a partner we were looking for a company that could help us to develop a large amount of content that would tell our story creatively. We also needed a team that could run the guiding operation (the biggest price inclusive operation in the country) to ensure that every visitor receives a guide and understands quickly how to use it. We have been delighted with the ideas and creative solutions that ATS has given us and their willingness to listen to our requirements, our feedback and our visitors’ opinions. In both the development of content and the staffing of the operation, ATS has demonstrated an excellent understanding of our visitors and their needs and we look forward to working with them to develop both further over the course of the next five years.”

Building on our expertise of interpreting churches and cathedrals in recent years ATS has created a guide that does more than simply show visitors around. We believe passionately in working in creative collaboration with clients, so have spent plenty of time in conversation and planning with the St Paul’s interpretation team to come up with a tour aimed at visitors and their expectations and needs when visiting an historic place of worship.

As part of the tour visitors get to climb to the top of the building to the viewing galleries and descend to the crypt below the nave, looking as aspects of faith and architecture as they go.

The guide is accessible to blind/partially sighted visitors through an audio-described tour and to D/deaf visitors with a subtitled and British Sign Language tour. And given the international appeal of the cathedral, the guide has also been translated into a range of languages.

St Paul’s contract with ATS covers full on-site service for these new guides. In addition to working with the cathedral on creating the content we have also provided the iTouch 5 hardware the guide content is delivered on as well as staffing the operations desk for handing out, charging and returning the guides at the end of the tour.