If you’ve followed me for a while then you’ll already know that one of my favourite kinds of voice over projects is narrating audio tours for museums, galleries and historic sites.
Tours I’ve narrated include the English tour for the Escher in het Paleis gallery in The Netherlands, The Nelson Trail around the area in London where Nelson lived, and an audio guide for the Massey Shaw Fireboat on the Thames, which was one of the Dunkirk ‘little ships’.
I have a background in archaeology (a PhD in Archaeological Science actually) and so any project with an historical angle is right up my street. If you want to know more about how studying pre-historic chewing gum led me to voiceover, you can read this previous blog post!
I have recently completed two very different historical projects which highlight two different ways I can work with heritage organisations.
The first was an audio guide for St Mary Redcliffe church in Bristol. This beautiful church is quite a tourist attraction, and many visitors enjoy guided tours of the building. However, guided tours are only possible when there are guides available, so the church wanted to create a tour that was more accessible to more people. They brought me on board to narrate an audio tour, which is now hosted on the Bloomberg Connects App so that visitors can download it to their own device, and be guided around the space without the need for a member of staff.
The second project was for Macclesfield Town Council who have created a walking tour around the town called ‘The Museum on the Street’. This consists of a series of information boards placed at points of interest around the town, which tell people about the history of the area. To enhance the experience, each board has a QR code which takes visitors to an audio file. They can then listen to the information as well, as or instead of, reading it. This makes the information more accessible to those who are visually impaired, and also adds extra information to what can be read on the board.
Macclesfield Town Council were keen to use local voices, so in this case I was not the voice over artist for the project. Instead I was the director/producer! I took my mobile recording studio to Macclesfield and set up in the Town Hall. The volunteer narrators then came one at a time and recorded their scripts, which I then edited ready to be uploaded to the Museum on the Streets web page.
This was a very different way for me to be involved in an audio tour project, but I really enjoyed it. I met some lovely people including the curator of The Silk Museum, a lady who works in a pie shop, a cartoonist, a poet, and the drummer from the local band The Virginmarys!
So, this is a new service I can now offer to heritage organisations. I can either be the voice of your audio tour or museum installation, or I can bring my equipment and record your own people.
To find out more about my services for the heritage sector please visit my website https://lizdrury.com/voice-over-for-heritage-projects/ and please contact me to discuss how I could help you on liz@lizdrury.co.uk