About Experience Castlegate

Digital Engagement for Heritage-led Urban Regeneration

The originating project was the funded AHRC/EPSRC project 'Digital Engagement for Heritage-led Urban Regeneration' led by Professor Dawn Hadley. This project brought together researchers in the departments of Architecture, Archaeology and Computer Science, alongside industry and community partners, Human Studio and Friends of Sheffield Castle.

The aim was to use Castlegate as a testbed to demonstrate how immersive digital technologies can harness cultural heritage and community engagement in the field of urban regeneration. Virtual and on-site digital experiences can be used to promote conversations with people about the future of the site by engaging them in its history, revealing its current potential and raising aspirations for a locally relevant and vibrant future.

Following on from this, Experience Castlegate brings the same researchers together to produce an interactive augmented reality experience as part of Sheffield's Festival of the Mind 2018. A laser-printed 1:150 scale model of the Castlegate site is used as the base for the virtual castle to be viewed using augmented reality technology. The project can be seen as part of the Futurecade exhibition in the Millennium Gallery, Sheffield, 20–27 September 2018.

The Model

The model of Sheffield Castle was created by Human, a Sheffield based creative agency. It is based on archaeological and historical evidence for what the castle was like, drawn from research on the unpublished archives from mid-twentieth-century excavations, with inspiration also drawn from surviving castles of similar type, for the architectural details. Research on the archaeological archives relating to Sheffield Castle was funded by the Pamela Staunton Bequest.

The 3D model of the Castlegate area was produced by MArch students at The University of Sheffield's School of Architecture. To support the user alignment process in the AR app, as well as for context in the virtual tour, photographs of the fronts of 'landmark buildings' that are easily distinguishable within the Castlegate area were provided by Kacper Pach.