A connected programme of digital experiences for Athenry — capturing the town and its stories across ten trail stops in 3D, bringing them to visitors through virtual tours, games and augmented reality, and building the marketing systems and revenue model that keep the whole experience growing.
This proposal is one project seen from four angles: a town experience, the ten trail stops that deliver it on the ground, the content that gives it a voice, and the systems that sustain it. The house is one stop among ten — every stop receives the same capture treatment.
The whole picture — Athenry surveyed, modelled and brought to life through virtual tours, a game, an AR trail and AR merchandise.
Castle, priory, town walls, market cross, the 1916 story, the house and more — ten stops, each captured with the same template and brought to life with AR.
Digital characters who act as multilingual virtual tour guides, plus voice, imagery and animation — created once, then reused across every experience in the programme.
The engine around everything — marketing, outreach, analytics and strategy tools that begin standalone and converge into one automated system.
The foundation of the programme. Athenry is surveyed and rebuilt digitally — its landmarks, amenities and attractions — then opened up to the world through virtual tours, a playable game, an on-site AR trail and AR merchandise. Everything else in this proposal lives inside, or in service of, this experience.
Athenry is the best-preserved medieval walled town in Ireland — a castle, priory, market cross, walls and street plan surviving from the 1200s, alongside a leading role in the 1916 Rising and a song known in stadiums around the world. Each stop pairs a real place with an AR trigger and an audio-visual moment, hosted by digital tour guides led by David Gordon and delivered in the visitor's chosen language — making the whole trail fully self-guided. Every stop is captured with the same template, detailed in Workstream Two.
Stops are indicative and will be finalised with local stakeholders — further sites such as Lady's Well, the fair green and the medieval street plan itself can be added as the trail grows. Triggers combine GPS geofencing for open ground with image targets (plaques, signage, merchandise) for precise placement, delivered as WebAR with no app-store download required. Every stop is also a placement opportunity for partner businesses and organisations — covered below.
Every stop on the trail receives the same treatment — surveyed, drawn, modelled and archived — so the whole town is captured to one consistent standard. The house is the worked example below: the template is proven there first, then rolled out across all ten stops, with each element applied where it fits (floorplans for built interiors like the house, castle and Heritage Centre; landscape capture for the fields and the ford).
The voice and personality of the whole programme — and its guides. A cast of digital characters, led by David Gordon, act as virtual tour guides: they welcome visitors, lead them stop by stop, and deliver every story in the visitor's chosen language. Created once, the characters, recordings, translations, imagery and animation are reused throughout the tours, the game, the AR trail and the marketing — making the house, the town and everything in between feel like one experience with one voice.
The face of Athenry's story — a young guide from the medieval town who welcomes visitors at the North Gate, leads them stop by stop, and hands over to the era characters where their stories belong. Designed to charm children and disarm adults, he speaks every language the trail speaks, and his look carries the town with him: the tartan of the market, the feather of the fields, a blade sized for adventure rather than battle.
Character design — final rigged and animated production is delivered under Workstream Three.
The guides make the tour run itself: a visitor picks a character, picks a language, and is led stop by stop with directions, stories and AR moments — voice and subtitles throughout. No staffing rota, no fixed tour times, no group sizes: the trail welcomes one visitor or a coachload at any hour, in any supported language. New languages are a content update, not a rebuild — each one added opens Athenry to another audience.
Choose a guide — David Gordon or a character tied to the era that interests you.
Choose a language — the entire tour, voice and subtitles, switches to it.
Be led stop by stop — directions, stories and AR moments delivered hands-free.
Go deeper anywhere — every stop links onward to the game, tours and partners.
The stories on this trail belong to the people who carry them. So they are gathered, shaped and approved with the community at every stage — and the programme deliberately gives back: skills, credits, and a permanent archive the town owns. A community curation panel of local historians and residents signs off the story told at every stop.
Recording sessions capture living memory — the voices that become the trail's narration and Athenry's permanent voice archive.
Children walk the stops, absorb the stories, then create their own — narratives, drawings and recordings that join the trail and the game.
Workshop residencies alongside 4E — producing narrative pieces and AR content, and learning the tools while they do it.
Students and local professionals produce broadcast-quality sound, video and documentary material — real work, for a real audience.
Community-made content premieres in Athenry with every contributor credited — then joins the permanent collection.
Skills — digital storytelling, AR creation, heritage documentation — planted in every participant from primary school to third level. A voice archive owned by Athenry, not by any vendor. A community-made documentary short following the project from the first recording session to premiere night. Credit for every contributor. And an annual creative calendar that renews the experience each year, giving people a reason to come back to see what Athenry has made of itself this time.
Annual primary school workshops add new children's narratives to the trail each year.
TY students and local artists create new AR content that premieres at summer's end and stays in the trail.
New stops, new voices and new community content launch the cultural season in Athenry.
A live session streamed worldwide — The Fields of Athenry sung home from its own fields.
The tools that promote, measure and sustain everything above. Each system is valuable on its own from day one — and each is designed to plug into an automated pipeline, so that over time they merge into one interconnected system.
Every system in this workstream is built to be pipeline-ready. As the programme matures, they connect — sharing data, triggering one another, and eventually supported by AI agents that carry out well-defined tasks: drafting outreach, preparing platform-ready video, and surfacing what the analytics say should happen next.
Each tool runs standalone, delivering value immediately.
Tools are interconnected — analytics informs marketing, marketing feeds outreach.
Recurring tasks are automated end-to-end through a shared pipeline.
AI agents logically carry out defined tasks within the pipeline, with human oversight.
The printing press put advertisements on paper. AR puts them in place — found on the trail, opened on the phone already in every visitor's pocket.
No print run, no delivery, no shelf. Nearly every visitor carries a capable device, and smart glasses are following. A promotion placed on the trail is instantly available to everyone who walks it — and to everyone who takes the virtual tour from anywhere in the world.
A magazine ad ends at the page. An AR placement is live: one tap to book a table, buy a ticket, claim a voucher, follow a page or get directions. The device is already connected to everything a business offers online — the trail simply puts that within arm's reach at the right moment.
Print circulation is an estimate; the trail is measured. Scans, views, dwell time, tap-throughs and voucher redemptions all flow into the analytics dashboard (Workstream Four) — so the host and every partner can see exactly what their placement delivered.
The trail doesn't just show visitors Athenry — it deliberately walks them into its businesses. Every stop, game challenge and AR moment earns points and tokens, and those rewards are redeemed only in local shops, cafés, pubs and venues. Heritage generates the footfall; the reward loop converts it into local spending.
A closed cycle, funded by the businesses who benefit from it — every reward redeemed is a measured conversion, and every redemption funds the next round of rewards.
Visitors collect points and tokens at every stop, in the game, and by completing challenges — with bonuses for finishing all ten stops.
Rewards convert to real things in real premises — a coffee, a discount, a pint, AR merchandise — redeemable only in Athenry.
Every redemption is counted at the till, so businesses see exactly what the trail delivered — footfall and spend, not impressions.
Businesses fund the rewards that work, sponsors back the popular stops, and the loop grows with each season and event.
The trail is routed through the streets, not around them — visitors pass every shopfront between the castle and the priory. Completion bonuses give people a reason to walk the full circuit rather than see one landmark and leave.
Points have no value outside the town. Every voucher, token and prize resolves in a local till — so the visitor economy the heritage creates is captured by the community that hosts it, not by intermediaries.
Collecting, completing and redeeming keeps visitors in town longer — and longer visits mean lunch instead of a photo, a browse instead of a drive-through. During events and festivals, the same loop scales to thousands of participants.
The trail is free to walk — that is what builds the audience — and the reward loop above converts that audience into local spending. Revenue then comes from what the audience makes possible: placements, partnerships, rewards, merchandise and insight. Audience, business and host all benefit.
Each part feeds the next: free experiences build the audience, the audience attracts partners, partner revenue funds new content and stops, and better content grows the audience again — with the systems layer automating more of the cycle as it turns.
To keep this proposal focused on the experience, the commercial detail lives in two companion documents provided alongside it.
The full day-rate breakdown by workstream — including the community programme — with delivery phases, payment schedule and the care plan for year two and beyond.
Six independent income streams, five-year projections with stated assumptions, and the payback milestone — how the trail earns back its investment and funds its own growth.
The house proves the template; the trail rolls it out across ten stops; the community gives the whole town one voice; the systems keep it alive and paying its way — and every year, Athenry adds another chapter of its own. I'd welcome the chance to walk through this proposal in person and agree a starting point together.