OUR PARTNERS
DiscoveryPEN Around the World
Here are a few venues that have adopted the DiscoveryPENs:
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East Anglian Sailing Trust
Dr. Jenner's House
Conan Doyle Collection
Ashley Forest Trail, Ireland.
Ashdown Forest
Imperial War Museum
Bristol M Shed Museum
Cliveden National Trust
Rosliston Forestry Centre
Teignmouth Jubilee Heritage Trail
Westonbirt Arboretum, Tetbury
Royal Navy Submarine Museum, Gosport
Oxford University Botanic Garden
Culloden Battlefield Museum, Inverness
St Andrews Golf Museum
Butler Gallery, Kilkenny
Heritage and Culture, Warwickshire
Springfield Academy, U.S.A
National Park Service, U.S.A.
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The RNIB use the same technology for their PENfriend, which we supply. Over 20,000 pens have been sold to primary schools in the UK and Sweden
THE PEN IN ACTION
Find out where and how the DiscoveryPEN system is being used
Conan Doyle Collection
Dr. Jenner's House
Ashdown Forest Trail
'The Gosport Gazette - 1914 to 1919'
RNIB Tactile Images and Map
Butler Gallery, Ireland
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Teignmouth Heritage Trail
There are twelve boards around the town which are all accessible via the pens. The text on the boards is read to the user, as well as an anecdotal story about the area where the board is located.
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Holywells Park
Holywells Park in Ipswich, Suffolk have just installed the Discover Bird board in their newly refurbished café. The Park has undergone a 3.5 million restoration as part of the Parks for People project, funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Big Lottery Fund, with additional financial support from Ipswich Borough Council and the Friends of Holywells Park. The board has been a great success with families learning about the 70 birds on the board. They love listening to the bird calls and song, and the quiz is a real hit, especially the question about Harry Potter's owl.
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Oxford University Botanic Gardens
In 2011, after seeing DiscoveryPEN at the Museums and Heritage Show, London, Alison Forster, Curator, ordered the DP System. They wanted to issue visitors with the pen and a leaflet that mapped the trail in a creative and informal way. Designed for the general public, the leaflet contains interviews with Philip Pullman, who's visit to the gardens was the inspiration for the Dark Materials series of books. There are sound spots with story-telling, introductions to various members of staff and of course explanations about various plants. The print is on Polypropylene A4 double-sided coloured sheets. The trail was created by independent interpreter, Eka Morgan. So far they have two talking publications - "Tales of Trees and other Plants" and "Discovery Trail - an audio trail told by Oxford Chemists".
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Culloden Battlefield Museum, Inverness
Most blind and partially-sighted people visiting a museum need help being taken around. The helper usually narrates or explains what information is being conveyed. This can become a rather tiring, sometimes inaccurate, often not very animated process. In order to avoid manual explanations, Culloden was looking for a simple-to-use, digitally-produced solution. Unlike Oxford (who have leaflets), the curator decided to apply sound-enabled leaflets and discs onto the glass cabinets. Thereby, simply touching an illustration of the rifle used provides a full explanation. In total, there are over 25,000 words used in the entire audio exhibit, positioned in less than 30 A4 sheets.
St Andrews Golf Museum
St Andrews have a lot of secondary and primary school visits. The curator wanted to have a simple device that could be used for project work, in which students could build their own trail of information learnt during their visit. Using the DiscoveryPEN and recordable stickers, students are able to build their own trail with their own voice recordings, recordings free from the web as well as illustrations of photographs of the mayor taken during the day.
Imperial War Museum, Duxford
Kay Cooper wanted to enhance the experience blind people had at their museum. She chose the DP System with its recordable stickers. Duxford made specially designed cases with recesses for the stickers to create a seamless display originally designed for blind visitors. As the project progressed, however, the possibility of use by sighted people was taken into consideration as well.
Bristol City Museum Audio Guide
We have partnered with Bristol Museum, enabling blind visitors to find out about many historic artefacts for the first time. Objects in the Egypt exhibition at the museum have been given stickers with audio descriptions stored on PENfriends. “For visually impaired people, they just walk around museums and it’s just one glass case after another. The PENfriend really brought it to life. "We knew what we were looking at, we knew the history of the items and how old they were and what they were used for. All things that we had no idea of before." - Jennifer Stirratt, registered blind person.
We are currently developing similar projects with The National Trust.
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Bristol M Shed Museum
The M Shed Museum is a state of the art museum that expresses and informs people of the role Bristol played in various vital industries for Britain. They originally used the PENfriend with plastic medallions, but are replacing these with the DiscoveryPEN with recordable badges. Paul Sullivan is a great believer in maximising the experience of blind people. When asked what motivated blind people to visit museums, he replied, "It's like this: suppose you were on holiday in Greece and you phone home. You would give a verbal description of the place, the sunsets, the cities, the beaches, etc., and the listener would build a picture of you in Greece. So the same thing happens with Museums." (PENfriend is designed for personal use by blind people; DiscoveryPEN is intended for institutions.)
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Ted Hughes Poetry Trail Audio
We worked with Stover Country Park, a Site of Special Scientific Interest and a Local Reserve that includes the Ted Hughes Poetry Trail. The poems in the pack were recorded by the poet Alice Oswald. Next to each title and poem on the sheet are sound spots for the TalkingPEN to play back the relevant recording.
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