School launches 'Navigating Nightingale' iPhone app
A new iPhone app, ‘Navigating Nightingale’, has recently been launched by the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing & Midwifery at King’s College London. The app guides 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 free app was created in partnership by 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 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.
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.’
Download the app for free from the Apps Store on your iPhone, using the search term ‘Navigating Nightingale’.