The 1627 Battle for Grolle was a turning point in the 80-Years War. Presently, the town of Groenlo uses it to profile itself as a tourist destination. The battle is reenacted every year – the biggest reenactment gathering in Europe, drawing tens of thousands of visitors. How do you go about making the Battle for Grolle even more attractive to visitors within the existing activities? And how do you accomplish that in both the digital and physical world? For the community of Oost Gelre, DST took care of the concept, design, illustrations and realization of hybrid experience route 1627 through my eyes – tales from the city.
Compelling stories
Life-size steel statues mark the landscape in and around Groenlo. There’s eight of them. You can visit all of them, or just one or two. Each statue has a QR-code that will take you to an app full of compelling stories on 1627. Stories that allow visitors to make choices for the fictive main characters of those stories, from peasant’s son to Italian mercenary.
Easy access
All those stories are based in a progressive web-app, a website behaving like an app. This lowers the threshold for users – an internet connection on a mobile device suffices. Curious what it looks like? You’ll find the app here (in Dutch only).
Produced locally
To make this special project happen, we partnered up with many local businesses. Steel specialist Eeftink Rensing cut and placed the eight steel statues. Niice Digital Marketing produced the app. Together with Achterhoek Toerisme we sought and found connections with other local tourism initiatives.
“A great addition to experiencing what happened in Groenlo in 1627“
Bert Porskamp, Oost Gelre city councilor
Result
1627 through my eyes – tales from the city. is a welcome addition to the tourism in the Groenlo region. Its concept allows for future addition of other locations in Groenlo and the Achterhoek region, or even national and international destinations related to the 80-Years War. For visitors to Groenlo it is the only app to experience the Battle of Grolle on your personal mobile device. The first reactions after its launch are promising.
