Digital reviews | The Tudors, sacred places around the world, and the Desmond Tutu archive

Tunstall and the Tudors, Durham University

When I was nine years old, my mam took me on a tour of Durham Castle, a historical landmark that was just down the road from where we lived. Afterwards, I declared that I was going to be a Durham Castle tour guide when I grew up.

Turns out it wasn’t just a childhood whim – a history degree and a career in museums would follow, and although I didn’t become a tour guide at the castle, I like to think that the visit was somehow responsible for the direction I took in life.

I often wonder which were the stories that captured my nine-year-old imagination? The staggering difference between my ex-mining community, with its pit roads and slag heaps, just a stone’s throw away from this 11th-century castle, must have played a part. But I suspect it is more likely to do with the castle’s Tudor history – the Tudors were my first historical crush and I couldn’t get enough of them.

I was delighted, therefore, to come across Durham University’s latest online exhibition – Tunstall and the Tudors. The exhibition is the culmination of the university’s research into the history of Durham Castle during the Tudor period. It started as a physical exhibition before morphing into this online iteration.

The exhibition introduces us to Bishop Tunstall, a figure that I find hard to believe isn’t more well-known today.

Tunstall survived and thrived in these turbulent Tudor years of political scandal and religious chaos in a way that many other bishops of that era did not.

This apparently shrewd, reasonable and compassionate man lived through the reigns of four Tudor monarchs and this exhibition not only tells his story, but also a wider story of this unsettled period of history. Fun pixelated images give a heavy subject some lightness, as does the mix of historical and modern-day images used throughout. It is a joy to navigate through the site, gathering small vignettes of knowledge as you go.

Physical access to the castle, which has been home to university students since the 19th century, is often limited for the public. This online exhibition is a great way of giving people an insight into this historic site.

Sacred Places, Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, US

This online exhibition, devised alongside a real-life exhibition in the museum, allows audiences to explore a selection of sacred places from around the world.

It’s nice to delve around in content designed for children. Remember your favourite primary school teacher, explaining something that captures your imagination, encouraging you to explore more? This is that teacher, but in digital format.

This is a longform digital experience featuring easily digestible content peppered with facts and soundtracked by recordings from each sacred place and the experts who know it best.

Simplifying the depth of the content doesn’t mean it isn’t meaningful. The content is varied and hooks you in. Each sacred place is introduced with short, sharp bursts of text and images, overlaid with audio – so while reading about the Buddhist Monastery of Wat Arun in Thailand we can hear the monks’ mesmerising chants. The 3D tours are high quality and easy to navigate and their audio is perfectly paced and informative. A set of teacher resources also helps students to reflect on the universal nature of sacredness and the places that are sacred to them.

The Archbishop Desmond Tutu Digital Archive

Described as the archbishop’s heirloom, this digital archive aims to give access to Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s life and work. Launched to mark what would have been his 92nd birthday, this online resource feels like it is at the beginning of its journey, with a handful of featured collections showcasing, at the moment, mainly photographs with little or no commentary or interpretation.

Although this is a digital archive and not an online exhibition, it feels as if it needs more context for those who are visiting with only a small amount of knowledge of the archbishop’s long and illustrious life. The featured collections are centred around different periods and although it was interesting to look at photographs, I found myself flitting between Wikipedia and newspaper obituaries to find out more.

I wanted more interpretation that would give me a better understanding of both the archbishop’s achievements and his legacy