Bringing Peel Park to Life: How Salford Is Connecting Communities with ThingLink

Louise Jones October 26, 2026

What if a historic park sat right beside your university campus and most people still walked straight past it? That is exactly the challenge facing Peel Park in Salford. One of the UK’s oldest public parks, Peel Park sits on the River Irwell’s floodplain beside the University of Salford. Its position below campus level and surrounding roads makes it easy to overlook, even for people who live and study nearby.

The Virtual Peel Park project set out to change that. By bringing students, local residents, volunteers and Salford City Council together around ThingLink’s immersive technology, the team created a digital experience that increases both the accessibility and visibility of this much-loved green space.

The Project at a Glance

Before diving into the detail, here is a quick overview of what this community collaboration has achieved:

• 5,000+ views of Virtual Peel Park since its launch in 2023
• Three new digital trails exploring heritage, wildlife and exercise
• 180 years of park history celebrated through a second project phase in 2026
• An AQA Level 1 qualification in Environmental Visualisation developed to support participant training
• A further project planned for 2027, extending the approach to the nearby Meadow in collaboration with local schools

These are not just impressive numbers. They represent real people discovering a place they might otherwise have missed.

Creating a Virtual Park With the Community

Launched in 2023, Virtual Peel Park was designed as a genuinely shared creation. Students, local residents and volunteers worked alongside Salford City Council to build an interactive experience that would introduce potential visitors to the park and everything it offers.

Using ThingLink, the team combined 360-degree photography, drone imagery, smartphone photographs and video into a single, navigable experience. You can explore the green space online, find out what the park has to offer and plan your visit before you even arrive.

Accessibility sat at the heart of the project from the start. The experience highlights more accessible entrances, including options for wheelchair users, alongside sustainable travel routes to the park. This kind of practical, inclusive information is exactly what helps people who face real barriers to visiting feel confident enough to make the trip.

VPP provides virtual access to this historic park and incorporates 360-degree images, drone videos, as well as images taken by members of the creation team on their own smartphones or other mobile devices. Visitors to the virtual park can enjoy an interactive and self-guided overview of the park’s features, its history and events, and it also highlights the sustainable public transport options available for visitors – including buses, trains and accessible parking.  The virtual park is available to explore on the Salford City Council website.

Building Digital Skills Alongside the Experience

One of the most distinctive aspects of this project is that creating Virtual Peel Park was itself a learning experience.

Members of the Virtual Peel Park team with the Mayor at the launch of the new park signs and virtual trails on 10 October. Pictured on the left is Fowziyah Adam, the University of Salford undergraduate who designed the signs.

To give the process a formal structure, the team developed an AQA Level 1 qualification in Environmental Visualisation. Participants learned how to capture and present information about their local environment while contributing to a community resource at the same time. The process of making the virtual park became inseparable from its value.

Three New Ways to Explore Peel Park

For Peel Park’s 180th anniversary in 2026, Virtual Peel Park 2.0 expanded the experience significantly. Three co-created digital trails now give visitors a reason to engage with the park in entirely new ways.

The Heritage Trail

The Heritage Trail showcases the park’s long and layered history. It gives visitors a richer context for the space they are walking through, connecting the physical landscape to the stories behind it.

The Wildlife Trail

The Wildlife Trail encourages visitors to look more closely at the natural environment around them. It turns a walk in the park into a guided opportunity for discovery.

The Exercise Trail

The Exercise Trail promotes movement and wellbeing, making it easier for people to use the park as part of an active lifestyle.

New signs installed across the park connect the physical space to these digital experiences, so visitors can move fluidly between the real and virtual versions of Peel Park. Even those signs reflect the project’s community spirit: a University of Salford Graphic Design student contributed their skills to the design.

Together, the three trails make Peel Park more accessible, more inclusive and more engaging for a wider range of visitors, whether their interest lies in local heritage, wildlife or simply getting outside and moving.

How ThingLink Powers This Kind of Immersive Experience

The technology behind Virtual Peel Park combines several of ThingLink’s core capabilities. The platform allows you to layer interactive content directly onto 360-degree images and video, creating experiences that feel genuinely immersive rather than just a slideshow.

ThingLink content can also be embedded on third-party websites, which is how Virtual Peel Park sits within Salford City Council’s own site while still delivering the full interactive experience. This flexibility matters when your goal is to reach community audiences who may not be looking for a specific app or tool.

A Resource With a Future

Virtual Peel Park is already a proven model for how immersive content can support a lasting university-community partnership. It brings together local knowledge, student creativity and digital tools to help people connect with a shared public space.

The next phase takes that approach across the River Irwell to the Meadow, another valuable green space close to the university. Planned for 2027, a new project funded by Sport England will use ThingLink to develop a virtual trail in collaboration with local schools. Its aim is to make exercise, heritage and the benefits of the outdoor environment more accessible, widening the circle of people who feel welcome in the green spaces around them.

This is what increased accessibility and visibility can look like in practice: not a single campaign or launch, but a growing, community-owned resource that keeps finding new audiences.

Thank you to ThingLink Certified Trainer Simon Hutchinson the participants involved and the whole team at the University of Salford for sharing their inspiring work on Virtual Peel Park and showing how immersive experiences can help connect communities with the green spaces around them.