At Guide-ID we help museums unlock their stories. One of the perks of my job as a Business Manager at Guide-ID, is that I get to enjoy lots of different audio tours created by our customers. Recently I have been listening to several “kids’ tours”, and I was surprised at how much fun they were. How do museums translate their information into attractive audio guided tours for a young audience?

How do you speak to children, who do not yet have the same grasp of the world of art, science, history or culture as a regular museum visitor? Two Dutch museums recently launched new kids’ tours and they’re happy to share their experience with us. Both museums engaged experts and even the target group itself in creating the tour, deciding on stops, pinpointing what topics could be made more relevant, and how.

“If you want children and teenagers to be able to relate, it’s really important to connect the past to the present. That is why, when we were setting up our new tour, I knew it had to feature Covid. It’s what we did with #Pandemic,”says Niko Bos of the Hermitage Museum in Amsterdam.

Make the audio tours relevant

Connecting past and present is exactly what the Hermitage did with their new Hashtag Tour for teenagers and young adults (ages 15-24) as part of their exhibition Tsars and Knights. Together with their Youth Advisory Board – a group of young people that advises the museum – the museum determined two key questions to making the visit more appealing to the target group. First: how do we make this topic relevant for our times -hence the hashtag- and second, how do we make it tangible and recognizable for children? The museum knew their choice of voice actor was crucial. They went with tv and YouTube personality Tim Hofman. “He speaks the language of a youthful audience, and once there is that connection, kids will be open to what he has to say.”

Audio guides Made fun

As a part of the same exhibition, the Hermitage also created a radio play for younger visitors (6-11 years old) which takes them back to the era of chivalry, evoking a vivid imaginary world. The purpose was to stimulate children’s fantasy by inviting them to participate in a dragon hunt set in the Middle Ages. Interaction is key here: the young visitors don’t just get to listen to a description of that era, but they become time travelers, and are sent back to the world of kings and knights. “We wanted it to be fun, and educational in a playful way.”

Get their attention

Fun and play was also the main goal of the children’s tour in the Dutch National Lifeboat Museum Dorus Rijkers in Den Helder, where children can learn all there is to know about rescue practices throughout the ages. The museum’s goal was to create a tour that is so much fun, that the young ones don’t even realize that they are learning at the same time. It’s the voice of a peer, 10-year-old Mees, speaking to the children as the guide of the audio tour. A competitive element was added, making them pay closer attention: during the tour, the children have to answer questions, with a medal awaiting them if they do well. “At the end the children go around showing off their medals,” says Sylvia van der Most of the Dorus Rijkers Museum. “It’s how we make sure children enjoy their visit. Because fun is the most important thing.”

Let us guide you

If you want to get started on your own kids’ tour: let the many wonderful tours of other museums serve as a guiding inspiration. At Guide-ID, we have made a selection of the most appealing stops and I would be delighted to lead you to them… because I now know where these treasures lay hidden!

The pandemic has made for a hectic, but also a very exciting time at Guide-ID. Initially, it seemed to have a large impact on our product: sharing stories using our audio players. But in this article, I’ll show you that the pandemic also confirmed what we actually knew all along.

Audio only audio tours and no distractions

Just before the pandemic started, I sat down with members of the Guide-ID team to brainstorm about our brand and the look-and-feel to accompany it. That’s because we wanted to better align our image with our core values. It was exactly during that creative meeting that we got word that all the museums had to close their doors. Seriously? Was this some sort of early April Fools’ Day joke?

In the years leading to that point, we had been rapidly expanding. Before museums had to close, we had shared nearly 400 million stories in 17 countries using our Podcatcher audio player! Our player had amply demonstrated its potential for years through all the hustle and bustle of apps and multimedia. Our ‘less is more, audio-only, and no distractions’ approach seemed to be the right approach for sharing stories in the cultural landscape.

No visitors and no listeners

And then one day… museums all around the world closed and we went from sharing 10 million stories a month to 0. At Guide-ID, that left us all feeling pretty worried – and obviously the museums shared this feeling. That’s because everything suddenly had to be online and in multimedia format. Would we really no longer need to go to a museum to see, smell, and experience actual artwork?

App developers didn’t sit still. For fear of catching COVID-19, no visitor would dare touch a dedicated device – such as our Podcatcher. All stories would have to be shared via apps moving forward. And so museums started all kinds of initiatives. Did we also need to invest in apps in order to be future-proof once museums reopened?

We will continue to listen to our customers

At Guide-ID we have known for years that apps in museums don’t offer the same added value as they do outside of museums. We know this because we study the data. And what all that data shows us is that visitors go to a museum to get away from it all; they want to be immersed in another world without distractions. And using a mobile phone with all of its distractions just doesn’t fit in with that. If notifications from your social media apps keep interrupting your audio tour, it’s hard to get a feeling of closeness to the actual works in the museum.

We had to come up with an appropriate solution to the aforementioned app-related hustle and bustle. We also know that anyone with a smartphone has an alternative to our Podcatcher in their pocket. That’s why our tech team created an app that shares stories with the same simplicity as our Podcatcher. With no distractions. Just by holding your phone close to the title card using the trigger. It’s brilliant (even if I say so myself)!

Dedicated devices are alive and well!

We offer visitors the same experience via both the app and our Podcatcher, the world’s easiest audio guide. This is all driven by one simple online platform containing all content. And from all of that data, the great thing is, that on a daily basis, we can see how visitors interact with both systems.

And what’s the outcome? Dedicated devices are alive and well! In fact, the percentage of visitors who choose a dedicated device over an app has never been higher. And visitors who listen to stories using our Podcatcher listen to more stories and for longer on average than visitors who use the app. Wow! This means that the Podcatcher still perfectly aligns with visitors’ wishes: listening to fascinating stories and enjoying art with no distractions.

Fortunately, in recent months we have seen a rapid increase in the number of stories shared around the world again. And I’m happy that all the data shows that we made the right choices with our Podcatcher and simple-to-use app. COVID or no COVID, visitors can only truly immerse themselves in a museum’s incredible exhibits when there are no distractions.

Winning over your first customer in a vast country like France is exhilarating. At least, that is how I felt when the Chateau de Baugé, in the Maine-et-Loire department, became Guide-ID’s first French client. I went there over the summer. Due to Covid-19, I had not had an opportunity to do so sooner. I was pleasantly surprised when I visited the chateau and encountered the vision of Isabelle Coulon, the Director for Tourism and Culture. While the chateau’s outward appearance is somewhat subdued, it bursts with life inside. The public has clearly been put at the heart of it. This heritage site is well thought-out with an underlying vision based on the needs of the contemporary visitor.

the renovations

Isabelle Coulon: “The aim of the renovations to the visitor route was to make the chateau accessible and really bring it to life. It tells the story of the life of the man behind its creation: René d’Anjou. When René inherited the ruins from his mother, Yolande d’Aragon, he set about rebuilding it. In 1454, he appointed Guillaume Robin as his official architect who turned the site into a stately country home vast enough to accommodate King René’s large court.

For the design of the new visitor route, we called on scenographer Christophe Berte and museographer Bruno Mousset from the Histoire de scenography agency. Everything was based on the building’s structure and using local materials. René had a great passion for nature and loved hunting, one of his favourite pastimes. After his hunting trips, he would hold magnificent feasts in the great hall of this hunting lodge, which was perfectly ample for the purpose. In those days, the contents of the chateau always moved with the owner, so there was no fixed inventory. A few items of 15th century furniture have been reconstructed based on illuminated manuscripts from the period. The advantage of these recreations is that the visitor can touch them and even use them! René loved all art forms and supported and commissioned works from a range of artists throughout his life: sculptors, painters, illuminators, goldsmiths etc. We were delighted to be able to open the visitor route in May 2021, after several postponements due to Covid-19. Our main role is to stimulate the visitors’ imagination and encourage them in a fun and interactive manner to learn about this chateau’s rich history.”

the audio tour

Once having bought a ticket at the desk, visitors will be guided to the start of the tour. They are shown to the free audio guides and told how to use Podcatcher (the name of our audio tour guide system). “Activate your Podcatcher and explore”. On the grand staircase, they will be invited to open a door: “Entrez! Le roi René vous attend….” Upon entering the room, visitors are greeted by King René in person, who will immediately tell the story of his life.

“The audio guide does not provide basic information, but rather an immersive layer to the themes covered in the tour. We wanted the visitor to leave the chateau with their heads filled with new discoveries. In the long term, we would like to give the audio guide a more central role and develop other routes, such as a quiz tour for example. Podcatcher is user-friendly and has already had a lot of positive feedback from the public.”

Everything at the chateau is designed to be accessible to all visitors, particularly children. There are lots of activities, touch screens, sensory models, etc. For example, in René’s private chamber, visitors can lie down on his bed and feel its red velvet covers. An unforgettable experience!

The loft, with its impressive truss, was the highlight of my visit. The original state of the building has been kept as much as possible here. Beautifully designed, ornate panels reveal that René was already environmentally conscious. For example, the timber for the roof truss was found in the nearby woods. A light and sound show, Les murmurs du palais, is held in one of the loft spaces. Far from being dry, this harmonious and aesthetic show brings the chateau’s story to life.

Multimedia is used in various parts of the route. For example, on the first floor, visitors can discover what life was like in the 15th century, with the banquet hall, the reception chamber where King René exhibited his wealth, the chapel with its display on the True Cross of Anjou, and the King’s private rooms. On the top floor, in addition to the roof truss and the lightshow, there is a gigantic knight (ready for battle?). There are also some beautiful animations of the woods reminding us that King René was a great lover of nature. At every stage of the tour, original and varied media accessible for all ages is used to immerse visitors in the reality of 15th-century royal life. An extra pair of eyes and ears would be handy in this museum, there is so much to experience. The public is enthusiastic. Here are some of the keen entries in the guestbook:

Congratulations to the Baugé team and Histoire de on their stunning achievements. I hope that many visitors will come to explore “King René’s palace”!

As you know by now, I’m a fan of ‘less is more’. It’s all about simplicity. But that’s enough about that! Or actually… maybe there’s a bit more to say.

People visit places for the art, the architecture, or simply for the experience. And when they do, they usually don’t want to stare at a small screen, wear a claustrophobic headset, or be distracted by an ever-pinging smartphone. After all, what could be more fun than talking to your family, relatives, or friends about what you’re seeing and experiencing?

450 million

Since 2009, we’ve been enthusiastically – and successfully! – promoting our Podcatcher to cultural institutions all over the world. We’ve already shared more than 450 million stories, and that number is growing every day. Never change a winning team, you might say. Keep doing what you’re doing. Nevertheless, we’ve come up with a successor.

The next level

Over the past year, with COVID-19 restrictions limiting what we could do, we’ve been focusing our attention on the ‘inside’ of Guide-ID. During my chats with our product owner Thomas and COO Johan (then still global manager), it became increasingly clear that it was time for us to take our product to the next level.

We thought: wouldn’t it be awesome if we created a device that enables our customers to serve all their visitors? A device that could also be fully integrated into the exhibition? And was just as simple as our current Podcatcher? There’s no doubt it’d be awesome, but it’s not something that happens overnight. That’s why I’d like to keep you updated on the development of our new audio guide over the next weeks and months.

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Multifunctional

For years now, exhibition designers and interactive designers have been asking us whether the Podcatcher audio guide also be used as a remote control for games or to ‘control’ a room. They also wondered whether visitors could listen to a story together, or whether you could listen hands-free without being cut off from the outside world.

From ‘no’ to ‘yes, absolutely’

Sadly, we used to have to say no all the time. We felt we were letting our customers and ourselves down. However, we’ll soon be able to say: ‘Yes! Absolutely!’ That’s thanks to the new Podcatchers’ wide range of sensors: it can be used as your personal remote control during your museum visit. And that’s not all…

Interactivity as it should be

Museums will soon be able to track all new Podcatchers throughout a building, so that the storytelling starts automatically as soon as a visitor enters a room. Even cooler still is that the room itself knows that a visitor has entered, and can respond to that. This is interactivity as it should be.

The Podcatcher audio guide as an identification tool

Every visitor who has a Podcatcher is assigned a unique number they can use to log on to an interactive console and obtain more information or play a game. Using the Podcatcher as an identification tool means no more fussing about with separate passes, rings, or other gadgets. Instead, you’ve got one single device that tells your visitors all the stories and is also fully integrated into the exhibition. How cool is that?

Want to know more?

If you think this is cool and want to know more about it, please message Thomas, Johan, or myself. We’ll explain everything with our usual dose of enthusiasm! There’s still lots of news about school groups, tourist buses, and families, as well as more updates on our software developments. But I’ll save all that for next time.

The sky is not the limit, it’s the beginning.

At Guide-ID, we live and breathe to help you unlock your stories. We believe audio guides are the best way to connect your visitor to your exhibition. It is my job and pleasure to help you create your own audio tour. Others have gone before you… Let their experience serve as an inspiration.

This fall, there are two remarkable exhibitions in the Netherlands that I’d like to recommend. Both feature excellent audio tours: Maritime Masterpieces in Het Maritiem Museum Rotterdam, and Icons in Het Fries Museum. And both are happy to share their experiences with you.

The exhibition

What makes the exhibition in the Maritime Museum stand out is that it brings together maritime history and art history. The exhibition was co-curated by Boijmans van Beuningen as part of their project Boijmans Next Door – exhibiting part of the collection at neighbouring museums during their renovation. A brilliant solution and quite a challenging one at the same time: whereas the Maritime Museum collects works for their maritime value, Boijmans collects them for art-historical value.

Integrating both seamlessly into one coherent exhibition – and thus, in one audio tour – was crucial to the success of this project. “The audience will love this combination of masterpieces,” says Bert Boer, museum director. And it works: the tour on the one hand tells visitors about the details of the Coca, a medieval ship, and on the other hand it explains why Jan Porcellis for instance was much more famous in his days than Jan van Goyen. An art lover’s thirst for beauty is certainly quenched with the masterpieces on display, varying from Mesdag to Monet.

A remarkable aspect of the audio tour

Is the great variety of (art-) historical information is presented in a very accessible way. For the voice-overs of the tour they chose two curators who could convey their enthusiasm and expertise in a natural way. Educator Hanneke Kempen specifically asked them to adapt the written texts and use their own words. That way, it feels like the guide is actually telling you the story on the spot, making you look closer and discover details about historical maritime scenes and artistic characteristics. It really connects the visitor to the object. The result is a natural, easy-to-listen-to audio tour that is appealing to both art lovers and anybody who enjoys such beautiful nautical scenes.

Equally appealing to the art enthusiast is the exhibition Icons: Masterpieces from the National Portrait Gallery in Het Fries Museum. Their aim of the story was to be as inclusive as possible and connect with a wide audience. With more than 100 portraits from the National Portrait Gallery in London, the museum did not intend to highlight the common “icon” of the white male hero, but rather to reveal the story of the often forgotten, and sometimes controversial, apostles and rebels. The audio tour unites tales ranging from the striking and androgyne self-portrait by Gluck (the British artist Hannah Gluckstein) to the remarkable painting of Chévallier d’Éon, an early example of a man openly living as a woman in eighteenth-century France. The purpose of the audio tour was to “reduce the distance between visitor and object, and in doing so, to broaden the horizon of the spectator,” explains Grytsje Klijnstra of the museum.

To add strength to the story, they selected the voice of the Dutch writer and tv-personality Splinter Chabot. Splinter can relate to the struggles that the portrayed people must have dealt with and is able to deliver the message with more relevance, and from the heart.

As Splinter says in the introduction to the audio tour: the overall purpose of the tour and portraits on display is to bring to life these unique stories. “The Portrait was a small lighted candle by which the Biographies could for the first time be read and some human interpretation be made of them,” is a famous quote by Thomas Carlyle. It is through the unique combination of viewing and simultaneously and effortlessly taking in the accompanying information that a portrait really comes to life.

“This audio tour adds so much value to the experience of our visitors – it really makes one look further and deeper. Splinter telling the story is an integral part of the exhibition concept,” says Grytsje Klynstra.

Bring your stories to life

Let the audio tour serve as a small lighted candle to your audience. Creating your own audio guide is easy. Your journey starts by asking yourself these two simple questions: what story do we want to tell, and how do we want to tell it? Then you’re on your way, and I’ll be there to guide it!

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a concept that lots of people will have heard of by now. Many well-known platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Just Eat already use AI systems which are self-learning and automatically improve. While this offers many advantages, it also has a rather scary side: the programmer no longer knows exactly what the system has learned. More on that later…

Text to speech

As you know, I’m a huge fan of technology – and therefore also of AI. I’ve been wondering for years how we can use AI on our platform for audio tours. We’ve found some wonderful examples, and one that I’ll be discussing today will soon be available to all our customers worldwide: text to speech (TTS).

All of us at Guide-ID have the same mission: to tell as many stories as possible worldwide. That’s why we’ve created the world’s easiest-to-use audio guide. We use audio to help people to discover more about what they see, without any unnecessary distractions. And that requires audio – a lot of audio.

No more time-consuming processes

This audio is usually recorded in professional studios and narrated by professional voice-over actors. While this produces fantastic audio, it’s also a laborious, time-consuming, and expensive process. This is a hurdle for many museums, and even the richer ones often choose to produce audio in one or two languages only. That means some visitors listen to an audio that isn’t in their native language. Many museums can’t do any production at all and don’t offer any audio tours. This situation is changing thanks to text to speech, which – as the name suggests – automatically converts text into speech.

From unbearable to pleasant to listen to

Until a year or two ago, the level of TTS was unbearably bad: we’re all traumatised by those tinny, robotic voices. But then came a tipping point in AI. Google, Microsoft, and Amazon had reached the critical amount of data that allowed the acceleration of the algorithm. From that moment on, the voices quickly became better – much better. So, we decided to do a test with real visitors and assess their experience. Our most recent TTS baptism of fire was in Amsterdam’s Nieuwe Kerk, where English-speaking visitors were given an automatically generated audio tour. And now the data…

A positive test result

Looking at recent years, we know that visitors who use English-language audio guides at Nieuwe Kerk listen to, on average, slightly fewer stops than Dutch-speaking listeners. This is based on audio tours with professionally recorded voices in a studio. The percentage for the English-language studio versions is 90% compared with the Dutch-language studio versions.

Visitors who listen to the TTS versions in English listen to just under 80% of all stops (compared with visitors who listen to the studio versions in Dutch). So, it’s not a huge difference! What’s more, the stops they listen to are listened to just as long as the Dutch studio versions. Basically, the visitors’ listening behaviour is almost equal between audio recorded in studios and TTS audio.

Audio content for everyone

This is pretty significant, as it enables us to offer all museums low-cost audio content on the spot, in all languages, without weeks of production time. It also takes all the hassle out of making additions and adjustments. Simply change the text, and you’re done. Want to add temporary content for an exhibition? Ta-dah! The algorithm will still make some mistakes from time to time – after all, the programmer no longer knows what the system has learned (or not). But these errors can be corrected manually. But are the voices all top-quality? No, as that requires more money and more patience. But for 99% of museums and their visitors, this is a fantastic development.

Machine translation: a matter of time

The next step is to add machine translations. The quality of machine translation has also skyrocketed over the last two years, and AI has played a part. We’re not quite there yet, but soon you’ll only need to enter texts in one language. At Guide-ID, we automatically make sure that all your visitors can listen to the stories in their own language the next day. It’s our way of making stories accessible for everyone.

Request a demo (or experience it yourself!) email to salesteam@guide-id.com

This is pretty significant, as it enables us to offer all museums low-cost audio content on the spot, in all languages, without weeks of production time. It also takes all the hassle out of making additions and adjustments. Simply change the text, and you’re done. Want to add temporary content for an exhibition? Ta-dah! The algorithm will still make some mistakes from time to time – after all, the programmer no longer knows what the system has learned (or not). But these errors can be corrected manually. But are the voices all top-quality? No, as that requires more money and more patience. But for 99% of museums and their visitors, this is a fantastic development.

One foggy Saturday morning in mid-January, I visited one of the most iconic buildings in Antwerp: the MAS, the Museum aan de Stroom. I was one of the first visitors, but I certainly was not the only one. A lot of families and some of our neighbours to the north were already on their way to visit the boulevard and the exhibitions. Everyone is welcome here, and the museum belongs to everyone: I felt that immediately. As you make your way on the escalator, you see colourful portraits of people, young and old, with objects they wish to cherish and keep for the future. The exhibition is entitled ‘Alles van Waarde’ [Everything of Value]. Each item has its own story. You can discover the power of storytelling here in the MAS, and especially in the ‘Luister’ [Listen] exhibition.

The Museum aan de Stroom

The MAS, on the occasion of its tenth anniversary, has organised this exhibition of thrilling and moving stories that have found their way to Antwerp from all over the world. Working with author and playwright Dimitri Leue, the museum presents the items in the collection as a touching audio play. The audio play is not an accompaniment to the exhibition: no, the audio play is the exhibition. In this way you really get to pay a lot of attention to the objects and become completely absorbed in the story. As there are hardly any distractions, you see the objects in a different way.

Tine Embrechts is the storyteller and takes on the character of Kameleonie. She puts your powers of empathy to the test. The stories are about cheerful, gruesome, sad and ominous subjects. There is a healthy blend of fiction and non-fiction. Historical facts are laid bare without taboos. The audio play begins, “I am Kameleonie; I am special. I have a condition… My differentness is endearing. I have kameleonitis.” I empathise so much with the character. If the song is about a happy goat, then I feel like a happy goat.

Stories

Each story reveals a new universe and spirits you away into your own imagination. This dream world is also evoked by the design. Each story is surrounded by a timber structure and comfortable seating. Illustrator Shamisa Debroey brings some of the stories to life with her beautiful illustrations. The exhibition is open to anyone from the age of eight upwards. The number of visitors allowed in at any one time is restricted, so that you can simply enjoy.

Co-creation is of great importance to the MAS. This is demonstrated at the end of the exhibition, when you can listen to stories by Antwerp school students. 35 items from the MAS collection were sent to 35 schools. In these schools, students could decide whether they wanted to write a story about the museum piece or use another theme. However, the stories about the object were given the opportunity of a place in the exhibition where the 35 objects are also displayed. As a visitor, it’s up to you to work out which story corresponds to each object.

Satisfied, I returned home, the fog cleared and it turned out to be a sunny day. One thing is for certain: listening is an art, and it’s no coincidence that that is the Guide-ID audio guides slogan.

Inclusiveness has been an important topic for some time, including in the cultural sector. How do you make sure your museum is relevant to as many people as possible? In this article, I’ll show you how Guide-ID enables every visitor to enjoy the story you’re telling.

Removing barriers, discovering stories

For Guide-ID, our platform is our way of making stories accessible. And the more stories told, the better! Whether culture, art, or nature: we give objects and spaces a voice and help people to listen and expand their knowledge. To do this properly, we’ve created the world’s simplest audio guide. It enables visitors to discover stories without any restrictive technologies or unnecessary distractions. And we want all visitors to benefit…

An emotional war veteran

I have vivid memories of the launch of our audio guide on the USS Midway Museum. They still used a system that had visitors dialling numbers to listen to stories. Our point-and-listen system is much more user-friendly, we think. After we had officially launched the audio tour with a whole lot of fanfare (as only Americans can do), a veteran in a wheelchair came to me and, emotionally, said: ‘This was the first time I could hear the voices of my fellow veterans!’ Being paralysed, he was unable to dial the numbers. Over the following days, he went to all the aircraft to listen to everything.

Audio tours against illiteracy

Another great example of how our audio tours can be more inclusive is a project we launched in a Tanzanian village a few years ago. As many of the residents can’t read or write properly (or can’t read or write at all), they’re unable to access the rich history of their village and surroundings. We wanted to change that. With the help of our audio tour, we’ve given the residents an accessible, easy way to learn more at their own pace!

Nobody is excluded from these audio tours

The age range of museum visitors is between 8 to 88 years old. We developed our Podcatcher with this in mind. A family visiting the museum (let’s say a father and mother, two children, and their grandparents) should all be able to enjoy the story of the museum. Many museums started using smartphone audio tours a few years ago, but that approach effectively excluded young and old visitors. It was anything but inclusive.

Our Podcatcher audio guide is so easy to use that everyone can understand and use it immediately, without any hassle. And visitors who want to use their smartphone can do so with our app.

Sign language interpreter for the deaf and hard of hearing

You may be asking yourself: what if granddad is hard of hearing? What use is an audio tour then? Well, our app offers a tour with a sign language interpreter for people who are hard of hearing or deaf. And if granddad doesn’t have a smartphone, he can use dad’s and still enjoy the stories. In the worst-case scenario, museums themselves can always provide some smartphones, so that no one has to miss out on the great stories.

A children’s tour for parents?

But will everyone hear the same story? Do those two children have to listen to the same stories as their parents? Not at all. Children want something quick-paced: a quiz, a treasure hunt, an adventure. We can provide this very easily by creating a special children’s tour on our online platform. (Incidentally, our data shows that children’s tours are also popular with many parents.)

Artificial intelligence for translation

I’d also like to say something about the language in which we tell our stories. Many museums around the globe provide information in one language only. But what if you don’t speak that language? Let me put it this way: French and Spanish aren’t my strong points. And yet, these days, it’s so easy to offer the stories you have in every language you can think of. Artificial Intelligence (AI) can provide good-quality translations and convert the text into very listenable (foreign language) voices, so that all your visitors can enjoy the story in their own language. It really doesn’t get any more inclusive than that.

More tolerance thanks to inclusiveness

Inclusiveness is important. Stories are important. They provide a broader view of the world and, I think, lead to more tolerance. That’s why it’s also an important driving force at Guide-ID. We want to share stories with everyone. If you have any ideas on how we can make our platform even more inclusive, please get in touch!

You’re in a zoo. On your device is a soft voice guiding you. It’s telling you about the polar bear and how the arctic ice is melting away. You are looking at two of them playing in the water. One looks up and stares you in the eye. And then the voice goes: they could be lost by 2100, if we don’t tackle climate change now.

Audio tours reveal everything there is to know about objects on display. They tell you about history, culture or nature. But they can also help create awareness on broader topics and stimulate debate within society.

Awareness Is key

If ever there was a perfect spot for us humans to become aware of our place in nature without having to travel too far, it’s the zoo. The Zoo in Rhenen, Ouwehands Dierenpark, uses an audio tour not only to support and enrich the visiting experience, but also to create awareness. In this era where we are just starting to realize the vulnerability of life on earth, Ouwehands Dierenpark not only wants to give visitors a glimpse of animal wildlife, but they also want to make visitors aware of the dangers their natural environment is facing and inspire people with tips about what they can do to help. They want to reach and touch people, for awareness is what will ultimately lead to the protection of nature.

Let Jane Goodall explain

With this purpose in mind, the zoo created an educational audio tour for adults that tells the story of the primates through the observations of the world-famous primatologist and expert on chimpanzees, Jane Goodall. The occasion was Jane Goodall’s new publication, The book of Hope, that was used as a guideline for the tour, and the script was written in cooperation with the Jane Goodall Institute. In the tour, Goodall takes the visitor on a journey with interesting details about the lives of different monkey species that everybody likes to learn about. But the story she tells is so much more than that: she shares her observations from when she was doing research in Africa and her growing concern for the preservation of these species and their habitat. Goodall: “A famous saying goes: We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children. But it looks more like we stole it from them!” Goodall believes in the resilience of nature, yet she warns each and every visitor that we all need to act now and do what we can – or it will be too late.

All eyes and all ears

If creating awareness is your goal, the audio guided tour is an ideal instrument. The message you want to convey comes across strongly in an audio tour, especially if the story is told by someone who is seen as an authority on the subject. Visitors will be all eyes and ears. If our shared goal is to give back the earth we borrowed, the audio tour in Rhenen may help create a new generation of people who will live and work to protect our blue planet.

Prior to joining the Espace Muséal d’Andenne (EMA), Anne Frank worked as a producer and content editor in the television industry. She is passionate about rallying a large audience around specific content. ‘I look for an angle, something particularly moving. It’s a way to spark interest in the widest possible public, even for content that is not so straightforward. What I like about working at a museum is being able to make culture available to everyone.’

The Espace Muséal d’Andenne opened its doors in July 2020, amidst the coronavirus crisis. It was born of the merger of the Andenne Ceramics Museum and the Scladina Cave Archaeological Centre. The new institution moved into a former 1930s teacher training college, whose magnificent art deco swimming pool was preserved. The building houses the museum, a library and the city’s tourist office, thus creating greater proximity between the museum and the public.

The audio tours

“This is the first time we’ve created audio guides,” Anne explains. “A few years ago, I visited museums in Oslo and I was particularly impressed by the scenography and the audio guides; by how the content was geared to visitors and to what might interest them personally, beyond the objects on display.”

Emotion is the key to arousing interest, and audio guides are particularly effective in this regard. They allow you to engage with the public, to create a VIP experience, as if visitors were touring an exhibition with a “real” guide without having to read long text panels. While you listen, your eyes can concentrate on the displays: visitors can truly “immerse” themselves in the exhibition. Audio guides drive the narrative: you can create a real story, speak to the emotions and open the mind. It is very likely that visitors will take touching stories home and remember them for a long time. In short, audio guides facilitate access to the exhibition displays; they serve as an intermediary to free the eyes from text, and sustain interest and motivation by offering an immersive experience.

The creation of the audio guide tour

I was in charge of creating the audio guide. We wanted to alternate between stories for ages 7 and upwards, and information that was accessible to a layperson, but without compromising scientific facts. It soon became clear that we needed a dual-narrative approach: a story for an immersive experience, and information by an archaeologist, for authenticity and scientific detail. The scenography was built around a poetic backdrop of watercolours that evokes the mammoth steppe, and which wonderfully complements the experience. We worked with Véronique de Miomandre, a storyteller, and Dominique Bonjean, a prehistoric archaeologist. The challenge was to create a single great journey through the exhibition; to find the right balance between storytelling and scientific information, and the right combination of emotion and science.

‘I worked on the audio tour for four weeks. I first produced a model and a storyboard with the content we wanted to convey, as well as information about the objects we had selected. Véronique de Miomandre then came up with stories about the objects and the content. Storytelling has the power to take you deep into an imaginary land in just a few words. It is incredibly effective. We subsequently added scientific information and worked it in with the storytelling. Dominique Bonjean revised all the text and made sure that no scientific facts were compromised, even in the storytelling sections. The two voice narratives set the pace during the tour. Véronique’s voice alternates with Dominique’s; even though he is not an actor, we decided he would bring greater authenticity. We switched the male and female voices in the Dutch version because we wanted to work with Fred Versonnen, a storyteller from Leuven. As a result, we chose a female voice for the scientific narrative. The soundtrack was enriched during editing, with sounds of wildlife, wind howling across the plains, snippets of voices in the distance.’

the cost

The total cost of producing the audio tour was around €2,500. The cost per additional version is obviously lower. The feedback from the public has been excellent, and many visitors listen to the whole audio tour. The tour lasts about 45 minutes.

We are preparing our next temporary exhibition: it will open on 24 June 2022 and will be devoted to the secrets and masterpieces of the Chauvet Cave. We are planning to develop an audio guide tour for the general public, for ages seven and upwards, and a more specialised tour for more informed visitors.