Walls Weekly 4

Map and App

Hello from Festival Organiser Martin, writer of your latest weekly update. In addition to the events taking place over the York Walls Festival weekend lots of work has been going on to develop a new walls map and also a festival mobile phone app. This post gives you a sneak preview of both.

 Map 

We have worked with designer Emily Hayes to produce a new walls map for this year’s festival. You may have seen her work on the Indie York map or the posters for the Micklegate Run a few years back. The map will highlight key features on the walls and the main streets in the city centre. The reverse side will contain the programme of events, so will be a neat pocket-sized guide to what’s on and how to get there.

Emily and the festival team are pictured below, enjoying the views from the Lamb and Lion beer garden whilst batting ideas back and forth. The map will be available as a download too.

App

It has taken several months of work behind the scenes but our new Festival App is now ready for testing. The Android version contains text on 12 sites around the walls, 3D models, audio and a historic slider picture so you can go back in time and get a feel for what each site would have looked like in medieval times. Children can enjoy a quiz too. We will keep you posted on whether the iPhone version will be equally clever.

There are a couple of separate tours, each lasting around an hour. The audio tour takes you Fishergate Postern Tower around to Monk Bar. The children’s quest will start in Museum Gardens, by our Festival Information Point at Multangular Tower, and head past Micklegate Bar to a ‘secret’ end point.

The App will have links to the festival website and local eateries. Designed by John Chapman of Yorgame, the free App will just require an email address when signing up. A fantastic new game set in medieval York is set for release in 2020, and you’ll get a flavour of the graphics on our festival App. The festival team will be testing the App in the coming weeks.

That’s all for now. There will be more festival news next week. Don’t forget to follow our #50tweets series on Twitter, counting down the days to August 10th & 11th.