School previews iPhone app at Story of London festival
A new iPhone app, ‘Navigating Nightingale’, was previewed at a Story of London festival event on Thursday 7 October at the Maughan Library at King’s College London’s Strand campus. The app will guide users along the banks of the River Thames to learn more about the life of Florence Nightingale a century after her death. Along the route, important features and buildings are highlighted that retell the story of her pioneering work in sanitation, nursing and hospital reform. The app has been created by King’s College London, AIM25 (Archives in London and the M25 area), Centre Screen Productions and 4Door Lemon and features a small selection of the many remarkable images and stories drawn from the London archives that participate in the AIM25 project.
Dr Rosemary Wall, Research Fellow in History, Florence Nightingale School of Nursing & Midwifery at King’s and Dr Geoff Browell, Senior Archivist at King’s, and Centre Screen Productions presented the soon to be released Navigating Nightingale app as part of the event, 'Florence Nightingale’s London Life: Innovation and Celebrity', on Thursday 7 October at 6pm at the Weston Room, Maughan Library, Chancery Lane at the King’s Strand campus. The event is part of the Story of London festival, a city-wide festival, which runs from 1-10 October, organised by the Mayor and celebrates the capital both as a place of heritage and culture, and as a cutting-edge city of change and new ideas.
The app tour begins at Somerset House, adjacent to King’s College London’s Strand Campus, and takes in the South Bank, Westminster Bridge and the Victoria Embankment, providing revealing insights into the life of Nightingale including her role in the Crimean War, in the rebuilding of St Thomas’ Hospital and the public perception of Nightingale and her work. The app uses advanced ‘complementary reality’ and ‘historical x-ray’ features, animation and exploration of images to re-imagine the London of Nightingale’s time overlaid onto a modern Thames riverbank.
Dr Geoff Browell, Senior Archivist at King’s, says: ‘Navigating Nightingale draws on the rich archive holdings of AIM25 partners, providing access to rarely-seen historical photographs, illustrations and stories to provide a window on a lost London. Highlights include George Bernard Shaw’s own photography of the riverbank, snapshots of daily life in a nineteenth century hospital and the glimpses of the industrial heritage of the South Bank.’
Dr Rosemary Wall also explored Nightingale’s life in London, where she campaigned for changes in health, the army and India, following her Crimean war work. Professor Anne Marie Rafferty, the Head of the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing & Midwifery at King’s, then guided visitors through the exhibition, ‘The Thinking Nurse’, which is also taking place in the Weston Room and includes first editions of Nightingale’s works and explores students' lives through photographs, examination papers, lecture notes and ward diaries.
2010 is an important anniversary year for the School as it celebrates 150 years as direct descendents of the Nightingale Training School established in 1860 by Florence Nightingale at St Thomas’ Hospital, a location and history of which is explored in detail in the app. The Navigating Nightingale app will be available to download from the App Store in early 2011.