A Locative Storyworld
MMXVIII
St. Peter's Churchyard, Bournemouth

Mary Shelley is buried here. Her creation still walks this ground.

Four interlocking paths through the churchyard where the author of Frankenstein sleeps. Two hundred years on, the Romantics return.

Launched 31 October 2018 Free, Open Air Any Smartphone
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What It Is

Shelley's Heart is a location-aware literary experience set across St. Peter's churchyard in Bournemouth, the ground where Mary Shelley lies buried. Developed with the Storyplaces research platform at Bournemouth University and launched for the bicentenary of Frankenstein, it threads four interlocking narratives through the churchyard around her tomb.

1818
Year Frankenstein
was first published
4
Interlocking
story paths
60
Interactive
narrative nodes
300+
Documented facts
on the Romantics
3
Years of
field production

Four voices. One churchyard. A single story told through overlapping lives.

Each visitor chooses a path. Each path traces a different route across the graveyard and centres a different figure. The paths intersect, diverge, and resolve around the grave at the heart of it all.

Mary Shelley, reimagined in the churchyard
Chapter I 1797 · 1851
Path of the Author

Mary

Widow at twenty-four. Author of Frankenstein at eighteen. Her path walks her grief, her authorship, and the creation that refuses to stay on the page.

Enter the path
Lord Byron, reimagined in the churchyard
Chapter II 1788 · 1824
Path of the Exile

Byron

Poet, aristocrat, scandal. The man who proposed the ghost story contest at Villa Diodati, from which Frankenstein was born. His path traces the cost of charisma.

Enter the path
John Keats, reimagined in the churchyard
Chapter III 1795 · 1821
Path of the Lover

Keats

Dead at twenty-five beneath a stone that names no one. His path walks the letters to Fanny Brawne, the odes he did write, and the work he did not get to finish.

Enter the path
The Ghost of Percy Shelley, in the churchyard
Chapter IV 1792 · 1822
Path of the Heart

The Ghost of
Percy Shelley

Drowned at twenty-nine. His body burned on an Italian beach. Only his heart came out of the fire, wrapped in silk, returned to Mary. His path is the search for that heart.

Enter the path

How to visit.

Location

St. Peter's churchyard, central Bournemouth. Walking distance from the town centre and the railway station.

Device

Any smartphone with a signal. The experience runs in the browser. Nothing to download.

Pace

Walk at your own speed. A single path takes around forty minutes. All four, a full evening.

Enter the Experience

A short film from the churchyard.

From the 2018 launch in St. Peter's churchyard, Bournemouth.

A project built in collaboration.

Research & Academic Home
Bournemouth University
Sponsorship, promotion, and in-kind support. Staff and students contributed time, talent, and the Storyplaces research platform.
Site Partner
St. Peter's Church
Bournemouth
Four nights of location shoots in the churchyard, and the gala dinner that hosted the locative launch.
Civic Partner
Bournemouth
Borough Council
Sponsorship and promotion through the council's tourism department.
Stage Premiere
The Shelley Theatre
Boscombe
Hosted the debut of the theatrical version of Shelley's Heart in November 2017.
Production Partner
Doppelganger
Productions
Theatre bookings, casting, and the industry professionals who brought the stage version to life.
Festival & Conference
Shelley Frankenstein Festival
with AUB
Promoted the stage and locative versions. Art University Bournemouth hosted the academic conference coinciding with the launch.
Institutional Support
Bournemouth University
Bournemouth University
Bournemouth Borough Council
Bournemouth Borough Council
Doppelganger Productions
Doppelganger Productions

Practice-based research in locative narrative.

Shelley's Heart was developed as a practice-based research project exploring how location-aware storytelling can bring literary and historical material to life in physical space. The project contributes to a growing body of work on transmedia, interactive, and locative narrative, and remains freely available for ongoing study.

Visitor data from both the live and demo modes informs continuing research into how audiences engage with distributed narrative in real-world settings.

Selected Writing

Gyori, B. (2019). Reanimating Shelley's Heart: breathing new life into locative learning with dual process design. Media Practice and Education, 20 (4).

Jones, A., Gyori, B., Hargood, C., Charles, F., & Green, D. (2018). Shelley's Heart: Experiences in Designing a Multi-Reader Locative Narrative. Narrative and Hypertext, Baltimore.

The Heart Returned

The one piece of him that did not burn, and the one piece she could not let go.

Percy's Heart · Returned to Mary · 1822