Imagine going into a museum where you have a free guide at your command, who accompanies you where YOU want to go and only tells you as much about the exhibits as you want to hear.
This friendly guide has now come to Blandford Town Museum on your own smartphone, using a system of special QR codes placed near each of our permanent exhibits. These colourful codes are automatically detected as you approach them using an app called Navilens, which you can download onto your own phone or borrow one of ours which has it already installed.
Each code is linked to an iGuide – an audio description of the objects on display – allowing vision-impaired and blind visitors to select the exhibits that interest them, be guided right to them, and choose how much of the iGuide they want to listen to. We’re calling them iGuides as they are Informative, for Individual listening and hosted on the Internet. Our stewards are on hand to help you download the Navilens app and start finding the exhibits and iGuides you want to listen to.
The iGuides provide lots of extra information, such as explanations of how the objects on display fit in to the Blandford area, so they will be useful for anyone wanting to know more than we can fit onto the short printed captions currently in the museum. What’s more, downloaded iGuides are stored in the app so that you can listen to them anywhere – we will be producing iGuides about St Leonard’s Leper Chapel, Alfred Stevens, the Great Fire of Blandford and other places and topics for you to enjoy as you wander along Blandford’s streets.
Please note that headphones – or your phone held close to your ear- are a must to listen to the iGuides in the museum, otherwise it could become iChaos!
The iGuides and Navilens codes were launched at two “Reaching Out with Sound” events in March 2025. Please visit our News page to find out more.
Thanks to National Lottery players.
The Blandford Museum’s iGuides have been developed as part of our “Reaching out with Sound” project, made possible with The National Lottery Heritage Fund.
“The National Lottery Heritage Fund is the largest funder for the UK’s heritage. Using money raised by National Lottery players we support projects that connect people and communities to heritage. Our vision is for heritage to be valued, cared for and sustained for everyone, now and in the future. From historic buildings, our industrial legacy and the natural environment, to collections, traditions, stories and more. Heritage can be anything from the past that people value and want to pass on to future generations. We believe in the power of heritage to ignite the imagination, offer joy and inspiration, and to build pride in place and connection to the past.”
For more information please visit heritagefund.org.uk/.