Back to the Coal House family launch hi tech kiosk network!
The reality TV family that 'stepped back in time' to discover south Wales' great industrial past helped HERIAN launch its new hi-tech information kiosks - a network designed to encourage others to experience the past too. Deborah and Cerdin Griffiths from Cardigan, along with their children Steffan, 13, Angharad, 12 and Gethin, 8, spent several weeks last year living the lives of a 1920s mining family in the BBC's acclaimed Coal House series. They joined Heritage Minister Rhodri Glyn Thomas to launch the network of interactive kiosks, which connect one point to another, and guide local people, as well as visitors, through the story of how south Wales once led the industrial world.
The computerised kiosks, located at 22 sites across south Wales, provide accessible information at the touch of a button - about the history of the host location - and sign-posting other sites to show the full picture of industrial South Wales when its coal powered the world and its iron and steel was the backbone of global development.
Linked through a central web server, the information kiosks use Google mapping and satellite images to guide people from site to site, using wherever possible the region's expanding network of walking and cycling trails, which more often than not follow former industrial routes such as tow paths, tramways and railway lines. It's an imaginative use of today's technology to bring the past to life.
A number of sites were funded by the Heads of the Valleys Programme. You can find kiosks at:
- Blaina Museum, Blaina
- Cardiff Gateway Tourist Information Centre, The Old Library, The Hayes
- Cyfarthfa Castle, Merthyr Tydfil
- Tourist Information Centre, Merthyr Tydfil
- Ynysfach Engine House, Merthyr Tydfil
- National Trust's Aberdulais Falls, near Neath
- Rhondda Heritage Park
- Ynysfach Engine House, Merthyr Tydfil
- Rhondda Heritage Park, Trehafod, near Porth
- Festival Park Shopping Centre, Ebbw Vale
- World Heritage Site Visitor Centre, Blaenavon
- Abertillery Museum
- Big Pit Mining Museum, Blaenavon
- Cynon Valley Museum, Aberdare
- Dare Valley County Park, Aberdare
- Parc and Dare Theatre, Treorchy
- Parc Bryn Bach, Tredegar
and shortly at:
- National Waterfront Museum, Swansea
- Brynmawr Museum
- Parc Cwm Darren, near Bargoed
- Discovery Centre, Llanelli
- Fourteen Locks, Rogerstone, near Newport
- Llancaiach Fawr, Trelweis, near Nelson
- National History Museum, St Fagans, near Cardiff