The university and cathedral city in South East Wales is using quick response codes to educate tourists.
A new program has now introduced QR codes throughout the city of Newport, Wales, in order to help to provide visitors to the city with more information about the history of some of the most important points on its map.
The quick response codes have been designed to provide smartphone carrying visitors with an informational tour.
The tour using QR codes was created by HistoryPoints.org, which has implemented this type of project in a few other cities in the country, as well. Currently, in Newport, there are eight different quick response codes that are located throughout the centre area of the city and that provide walkers with a portion of the “Heroes and Villains” tour. Among them is the barcode placed on Clarence Road at the Cenotaph. When scanned, it provides the smartphone users with stories about a soldier who came home from the Boer War, only to murder his wife. It also shares the story of a delivery boy who was a hero in the dock disaster that occurred in 1909.
These QR codes make it possible for visitors to learn a great deal more than would be possible to show on a plaque.
The mobile device based walking tour runs from the Clarence Place Cenotaph to Cardiff Road at the Merchant Navy memorial. The founder of HistoryPoints.org, Rhodri Clark, is hopeful that this new tour will not only be appealing to tourists, but that it will also draw some of the locals to learn more about their own history.
Among the QRcodes that are a part of this tour are:
• The Cenotaph at Clarence Place
• The John Wallace Linton on Cambrian Road
• The Queen’s Hotel on Bridge Street
• The Chartist protest site on Commercial Street
• The Tom Toya Lewis on Commercial Street
• St Woolos Cathedral at Stow Hill
• And the Merchant Navy memorial on Cardiff Road
Each of the QR codes provides information about the location, itself, as well as some historical background information in order to provide context to the importance of the site.
