Helen MorganAnd it doesn’t stop there. By April, 1,000 QR codes were installed at all major landmarks in the town, which will direct smart phone users to the Monmouthpedia site and tell them interesting facts and history in numerous different languages.
The project aims to bring together the community of Monmouth as they create the website together, with several generations of residents and local community groups taking part. The website tells readers to “Get involved – BE BOLD.”
The project has had an abundance of media attention over the past couple of months and have shone a whole new light on the town of Monmouth.
However, could this level of hyperlocality be rolled out across the UK? In cities such as York, which not only has a vast history, but is also a lot larger than the town of Monmouth, the project would be a lot different. It would involve an enormous number of contributions and content from residents and visitors to the city and need constant monitoring for new articles.
There are some definite advantages to this, however, as the Wiki site could be used as a marketing tool to promote certain locations around the city that perhaps would be overlooked by tourists in traditional circumstances. The QR codes could then go on to suggest other places of interest that are off the beaten track which would in turn boost the tourist trade in the city.
Monmouthpedia is most certainly an interesting and innovative idea. Whether it can be as effective across the rest of the country, however, remains to be seen.
