Welcome to Pyka_lens and digital heritage guidebook.

Cadw have been working in partnership with Pyka, a creative tech company based in Newport, who  provide creative experiences for schools, galleries and museums, to develop a new exciting and accessible way for people to engage with our historic sites right across Wales.

Pyka worked alongside a wide variety of individuals, with different needs and background, to develop a tool, that helps uncover deeper layers of engagement within historic locations and their surrounding environments, in a way a typical visitor may not discover on their own terms.

Whether you have been to a Cadw site many times before, or have never thought of a historic site as somewhere you might go, the Pyka_lens app gives you a new reason to visit and a new way to discover the historic environment and these wonderful spaces, that our history was made in, our ancestors lived and worked in and visitors and artists have loved through the years.

What can you hear? What can you feel? What can you imagine?

The creative digital tool focuses on these multi sensory layers, giving you a rich and meaningful engagement and maximising your use of your senses.  There’s more to our sites than what you may first notice. The app encourages you to explore our historic sites more deeply and to create unique pieces of digital art in the process.

Through the guidebook, and our linked custodian tips, we hope you will discover the potential of this new digital tool, to help enable you to discover and explore our wonderful heritage sites and your other own favourite  local, possibly “unloved  heritage” sites,  in a different, creative,  inspiring and stimulating way. 

Whether you use the Pyka_lens app at one of Cadw’s 130 sites just for your own personal fun, or as a learning resource (ticking digital competency, literacy, art and other boxes) even perhaps using to gain an Arts Award — which the app and this guide is designed to support, it doesn’t matter. All ’story-worlds’ created in the app are unique and can be made accessible for others to view and enjoy.

We really hope you enjoy using the Pyka_lens app at our sites, and looking forward to viewing your digital creations over time.