Time Travel

Project Name

Whithorn Time Travel App and Interpretation

Project Type

FCC Scottish Action Fund - Community

Our Funding

£12,940

Total Project Cost

£22,940

The Whithorn Trust is the custodian of the Whithorn archaeological site, famed for the earliest evidence anywhere in Scotland of Christian practice and settlement, in around 450AD. The artefacts from Whithorn are regarded as internationally important and have been studied by archaeologists for over 130 years.

In 2022, the Whithorn Trust began a process to create a digital representation of the some of the buildings which once stood on the site over the centuries, using augmented reality, and wanted to use these representations to “time travel” on the site to these specific points in time. To do this funding was needed to install physical stations, where a QR code could be scanned by visitors’ smartphones to let them explore the structures which would have been on the site 1300 years ago, 1000 years ago and 600 years ago.

The Trust applied to FCC Communities Foundation for the funding to create the sculptural stations which would be positioned around the site and house the QR codes. A total of seven stations were produced and carved to reflect the time period being represented.

The project delivered a new and innovative way for visitors to visualise and understand the buildings which once stood at the site by showing how the same location had been used and reused over time.

In additional the project offered opportunities to young people from the local high school, often non-attenders, to be involved, learn new traditional skills in sculpture and carving, and achieve a sense of wellbeing in seeing the stations they designed and carved installed at the site.