Sheffield Trip
The Wardsend Cemetery project was a bit of a mystery for us.
We knew that it had to represent the site which is a heritage park. We had a rough idea of how it looks now, thanks to Howard’s presentation from a few weeks before, but that was it.
Annie, our course leader, had some further conversations with Howard from the Friends of Wardsend Cemetery association, and Amanda whose work is related to students’ experience exchange at the UAL; she also works closely with the University of Sheffield and Sheffield Museum.
Our client for this project came up with the idea of having a VR experience (that we are going to deliver) based on the painting called “Sheffield and the Valley of the Don” from 1863 by Edward Price (1800-1885). The painting from the nineteenth century shows the cemetery from the hill perspective above the city. The viewer can spot the cemetery with the chapel, houses, people and farm animals, the Don River, a steam train approaching, as well as the city on the other side of the river. It is a beautiful and detailed painting that became a starting point for our project.
It has been decided that a visit to Sheffield would be helpful as it would give us a chance not only to meet our customer in person, but to visit the site as well as the museum where the original painting is displayed. Therefore, a field trip to Sheffield was organised.
On Thursday 28.4.2022, a group of students including myself with their course leader, Annie, took a train from King’s Cross St. Pancras to Sheffield. Howard, kindly met us at the station. He then took us to the Wardsend Cemetery, where we met another member of the association, Hugh Waterhouse. Both hosts walked us through the site, talked about its history but also about what the Friends of Wardsend Cemetery are trying to achieve in terms of clearing the space, and attracting people to visit and explore it.
There were some events held there in the recent past in collaboration with the local university and college. Guided walks and monthly ranger-led sessions are held there regularly.
The Cemetery is on the side of the city, therefore it took us some time to get there, even though we were travelling on a tram. We then had to walk for about 20 minutes to get to the bridge over the Don river. It was a pleasant journey, also a chance to talk to Howard about the Cemetery and the current development.
We stopped by the bridge where we started taking photos for the project – to be used in documentation as well as for referencing.
Some of us, including me, walked down the river bank to take more photos and record the sound of the river.
We then were handed the Friends of Wardsend Cemetery information folders with images of the site from the past, recent photographs and a description of past events – everything Howard and Hugh were talking to us about.
Exploring the place was quite fascinating. It looks nothing like the cemetery in the painting. It has become an impressive forest with loads of ivy and other climbing plants with gravestones with visible time-passing marks emerging between nature. We took time to take more photos of the cemetery parts, gravestones and nature in general.
We then walked up all the way to the spot where the painter’s perspective was from to have a better idea of how the valley with the cemetery looks now and what the artist (possible) saw back then. Once again, the view has changed drastically – big, mature trees are covering up most of the view. We however had a good idea of what we were looking at and how to reference it to the painting we will be working with.
Visiting the cemetery we used a device with a lidar scanner to scan some elements of the environment and have two models based on that images built – the first one was a piece of the terrain on the hill, and the second one was the gravestone of a footballer that died during the football game and was buried on the Wardsend Cemetery.
After spending over two hours on the site, we had just a little time left to go to the Weston Park Museum to see the “Sheffield and the Valley of the Don”painting. We had to walk back to the tram stop and take a tram towards the station, but this time we got off at the university. From there, there was another short walk to the gallery in the park. We located the painting and had a closer look at it. We also were interested in the physical space around the image as it is an important element for the VR experience. We need to know where the equipment will be placed, how much space is there around etc. We made notes, thanked Howard for his time and rushed back to the station. We grabbed something to eat and jumped on the train to London.
Even though we were quite tired after spending several hours outdoors, we used our time on the train to brainstorm first thoughts and ideas for the project.