Creative Brief: Havering Unearthed Digital Heritage Platform

Havering Unearthed is a playful, experimental digital heritage platform that brings together two connected experiences: an online digital museum for the borough and a location-based heritage map.

Designed as a joyful space for exploration, the platform showcases curated stories, artefacts and newly commissioned works from across Havering’s past and present, while also inviting people to discover heritage through the places they live, walk and gather. Part archive, part living artwork, the Havering Unearthed Digital Heritage Platform uses digital tools to make heritage feel accessible, surprising and alive – something to stumble upon, return to, and contribute to over time.

Objectives:

1. Heritage Documentation & Celebration
   Create a living digital record of Havering’s diverse heritage, sharing stories, artefacts and narratives from past and present communities, while celebrating heritage as something dynamic, evolving and shared.
2. Playful Digital Innovation
   Develop an innovative digital platform that combines an online digital museum with a location-based heritage map, enabling playful, experimental and mixed-media storytelling through audio, film, images, text and emerging formats. 
3. Engagement, Discovery & Participation
   Enable local communities, particularly historically underrepresented voices, to actively contribute to, explore and reinterpret their heritage, both online and through place-based encounters across the borough.
4. Accessibility, Openness & Care
   Ensure the platform is fully accessible, inclusive and easy to use, adhering to recognised web accessibility standards and principles of openness, so heritage can be discovered and enjoyed by the widest possible audience.
5. Sustainability & Longevity
   Design a robust, maintainable digital platform with a minimum five-year lifespan and the potential for a ten-year future, allowing for regular updates, new commissions and long-term stewardship.

Target Audience:

• Local communities of Havering, including underrepresented and global majority communities.
• Schools, educators, and students interested in local heritage.
• Historians, researchers, and heritage enthusiasts.
• Cultural institutions and digital archives.
• The widest range of the general public potentially interested in Havering’s heritage.

Key Features Specification:

1. Digital Museum: An online, playful digital museum that brings together and brings to life key curated stories from Havering’s past through objects, images and media.
2. Digital Heritage Map: A location-based digital map that anchors stories to places across Havering.

Considerations: 

1. Archiving and Sustainability: Help ensure long-term preservation of heritage artefacts and stories gathered. Regular updates, including new artefacts, stories and events, with potential for new funding to maintain and develop the platform into the future
2. Accessible Design: Ensure the platform meets all web accessibility standards
3. User Engagement Tools: Social sharing features to allow users to spread stories across social media platforms (specifically through Havering London channels)
4. Tone & Messaging: Inclusive and celebratory, accessible and open, sustainable and forward-thinking

Technical Requirements

• Links to the Havering London website in seamless ways to connect wider events and opportunities
• Integration of audio description
• Responsive web design to ensure a seamless experience across desktop, tablet and mobile
• A content management system (CMS) enabling easy updates by project staff
• Secure hosting for a minimum of five years, with plans for a ten-year lifecycle

Success Metrics

• Number of community contributions (user-generated content)
• Engagement metrics including site visits, social shares and interaction with digital markers
• User feedback on accessibility from a diverse range of audiences
• Long-term preservation and regular updates, with the aim of sustaining the platform beyond its initial five to ten-year period

Budget

Fee: £25,000 (inclusive of VAT) for full design, build, testing and handover, hosting + maintenance for 2-years.
Payments in instalments aligned with milestones.
Expected Delivery: Within 3-4 months from contract start 

Please apply by sending us your proposal. Key aspects we’re looking for in the proposal include:

• Examples of past projects with similar scope or scale
• Two references from recent clients
• A short outline of how your approach would meet the brief
• A timeline proposal that aligns with our expected 3-4 month delivery window
• Your fee proposal (total budget is £25,000 inclusive of VAT)

Submission deadline:  End of day Monday 9 March 2026
Please send your submission to: hello@haveringlondon.com 

Interviews / discussions will be held during the week commencing 9 March 2026 with a decision by the end of that week and an announcement of the preferred contractor to be made on Thursday 19 March 2026.