Name: Clifford’s Tower Revealed – Stories | Reopening April 2022
Uploaded: 2022-01-06T17:55:17.000Z
Duration: 5 min 47 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

I remember when I first came to  Clifford's Tower. You're just hit by this huge structure.

Clifford's Tower is the skyscraper  of its day. Even today it still has that impact.  

Clifford's Tower is definitely one of the most  important buildings in York and I would argue  

one of the most important buildings anywhere  in England. The tower is the biggest survival  

of the castle of York, that throughout the Middle  Ages and up to the 17th century was the centre of  

government in York. And really, often the place where  the whole of the north of England was ruled from.  

This is a place every part of which breathes with  human stories and it was with those human stories  

that we've been most interested  in dealing in our interpretation now.

This was a great project for bringing together  a whole load of different specialist teams  

and I think the experience for  visitors will be all the better for it. 

When the visitor enters the tower, they will really  receive a completely new experience.

We're going to combine written narrative with sound and stories  told by audio, which will be embedded into some of  

the elements we create. We start at the base  of the tower with a couple of key elements  

so we have there a tactile map which is cast  bronze and we also have wonderful new, very large  

cast bronze timeline which is being inset into new  paving and this will tell the history of the tower.  

So when you enter the tower, there'll be a  series of cast concrete lecterms and that  

will really introduce the visitor to the  interpretation so they know what to expect.  

The purpose of the soundscapes is to be able  to bring the past to life for any visitors  

who come into the building. You would walk into  Clifford's Tower and as you walk through the  

various zones of the interpretation you actually  hear the historical scenes that could easily have  

happened at those points. Clifford's Tower had  a really long and interesting history because it  

was built by human beings and human beings have  had different uses for it at different times.  

And so through the soundscape, what I wanted to do  is try and reflect the relationship of the human  

beings to the building itself. What did they do  inside the building and what did that sound like?

Quite a few of the scenes are in languages that  we just don't speak anymore either completely  

different languages like Old French or earlier  versions of English. One of the most interesting  

scenes I think for that is the kitchen scene,  which is a mix of Middle English and French,  

and the language you spoke depended on your  position in society so you hear that through the kitchen scene.

The technical installation at Clifford's Tower has  been really deeply thought about. It was important  

to create one unified soundscape that actually  encompasses a number of different areas that are  

different time zones but it all acts as one thing.

We have selected five characters through the ages that we've created through historical research, through working really closely

with the English Heritage team, and these people represent  a really dramatic moment in the history of Clifford's Tower.  

What we've also tried to do is, so the  audience has a real connection with those people,  

is to cast people who are based locally.  We were looking for people that really connect with York, 

that really care about its history. So the  character of Edith, she's a really fiery character  

played by a brilliant, brilliant woman called Julie Marshall  who's actually a Maths teacher from a local secondary school.

VO: 'Then the conqueror returned and took back the city and he's only gone and built a castle right where our own was! I'm fed up of being here. Some of the things I have  

Then we're going to meet Elena, who is our youngest performer.  She's just nine years old.

Elena is then telling us the story of what happened and she's relating back...  her sort of stepfather and who was involved with the tower as a soldier.  

We hoped that we'd be able to get the fabric of  the building almost to reveal its stories. 

So what we've come up with is this beautiful bench idea,  so people can sit, they can lean into the bench  

The benches are a really important part  of the whole soundscape experience.

They provide the link between the tower and the city of York itself.  These are the residents of York at different periods of history,

talking about events that happened to them.

The design for access is something  that we really wanted to integrate from the outset. 

So the elements that will help people who have access issues  will really help to enliven and enrich the experience for everyone.

So we have tactile elements within the panels and these will  tell you if there's an audio or if there's a QR code,

and that will deliver either translated text or large-scale text  or further stories on to your phone.

We hope that our project will improve every part  of the experience at Clifford's Tower.

For the first time since the 17th century, it's now possible to  get to some of the upper areas of the tower.

This is a building of huge life, of huge history

that's had an incredible career and is here right here  in York as part of its complete history.