New Family Trail brings Tower Bridge to life
New Family Trail brings Tower Bridge to life
- Family Trail encourages visitors to explore Tower Bridge Exhibition like never before with an innovative app and activity-packed booklet for 5-10 year olds
- Incredible app technology creates a unique experience, offering interactive games and first of a kind features in the heritage tourism sector
- The app launches in time for May half-term, and can be downloaded via the Tower Bridge website www.towerbridge.org.uk/familytrailapp/and App stores
- For further information: towerbridge@kallaway.com or 0207 221 7883
Iconic London attraction Tower Bridge Exhibition is launching a new Family Trail to engage and excite younger visitors, further enhancing the family offering at the most famous bridge in the world.
Launching in time for May half-term, the Family Trail has been designed with Generation Media in mind. Comprising of an innovative app and a trail booklet, the new addition offers visitors a playful exploration of the bridge and its workings.
Using the app in the Engine Rooms, visitors can transform their mobile into a working wrench to tighten the bolts of a shaky engine; a shovel to let them stoke the boiler to power the bridge, or steer their boat to safety along the Thames by tipping their phone from side to side, collecting quirky sounds to compose their own tune along the way.
From instructions on how to build their very own paper boat to a game of eye-spy using the panoramic views of London from the high-level Walkways, 42 metres above the Thames, the trail lets little explorers experience the historic Tower Bridge in a lively and modern way.
What’s more, activities in the Family Trail booklet entertain even the younger siblings and those without smartphones, bringing parents and children of all ages together for a day of family fun, exploration and imaginative learning.
Josephine Noti, Marketing and Education Manager at Tower Bridge Exhibition commented: ‘We are delighted to launch this fantastic new trail which enables families to connect with the heritage behind the icon in a truly fun and unique way, and also to help our younger visitors discover and appreciate the various aspects that the Bridge embodies: historical, architectural, technical, aesthetic, social, etc. and the important role that the bridge still plays in 21st century London.’
Kieron Gurner from Calvium Ltd was the Project Manager for the Family Trail app. He said: 'Inspired by the mechanical, physical outputs of Tower Bridge's Victorian engineering, we aimed to connect visitors with the often-overlooked physicality of their phones. Turning a phone into a spanner, users can tighten screws in the Engine Rooms; or blow wind through the sails of a boat, as they navigate through the closing arms of the Bridge. These games utilise the physical context that the phone has, like the accelerometer, which understands movement and gravity, and the microphone, which can respond to volume. It's easy to forget that the phone knows a lot about the world its in; how it's being held or moved, and how loud it's surroundings are - which the app makes use of in playful ways, to connect the visitors with their environment more.'
Free to download, the Tower Bridge Family App is available from the Tower Bridge website, Apple App Store as well as Google Play for Android devices. For more information, visit www.towerbridge.org.uk/familytrailapp/or download the app in the App store today.
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Notes to Editors:
Tower Bridge (http://www.towerbridge.org.uk/)
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- Tower Bridge was the creation of architect Sir Horace Jones and civil engineer Sir John Wolfe Barry. It took eight years to complete and was officially opened on 30 June 1894 by the Prince and Princess of Wales (the future King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra)
- Tower Bridge Exhibition opening hours:
o Summer Opening Hours: April - September 10:00 - 17:30 (last admission)
o Winter Opening Hours: October - March 09:30 - 17:00 (last admission)
- Admission prices for Tower Bridge Exhibition:
- Adults: £9
- Children aged 5-15: £3.90
- Groups of 10 or more: £3.40
- Concessions: £6.30
- Family tickets from £14.10
- Under 5s free
- The nearest underground stations are London Bridge or Tower Hill
- Starting the journey in the Bridge’s north tower, visitors are taken back in time with never-seen-before film footage of Victorian London and the first ever recorded bridge lift.
- The experience visiting the high-level Walkways has now been bolstered with the addition of the glass floor, which gives visitors a unique perspective of London 42 metres above the Thames. Guests are able to tread on the glass floor whilst traffic passes beneath their feet – the glass floor panels can withstand the weight equivalent to one elephant or two London Black Cabs.
- “Look up on London” – a mirror has been installed over the West Walkway’s glass floor offering visitors a dizzying experience of London
- The popular Great Bridges of the World exhibition has been refreshed, now featuring 40 of the world’s most revered bridges, each of which represents a breathtaking feat of engineering.
- Tower Bridge are supported by The City of London Corporation – a uniquely diverse organisation, in that it not only promotes and supports the City and provides it with a full range of services, but provides wider services for London and for the nation as a whole. www.cityoflondon.gov.uk.
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