Bridging the Tamar joins MoMA on Bloomberg Connects app

You do not need to stand on the riverbank to hear the story of the two bridges that carry the road and rail line between Devon and Cornwall. From today you can hear it from your sofa, or from the middle of the crossing itself, for nothing.

A free guide to the crossings

Tamar Crossings has launched a free digital and audio guide to the heritage of the Tamar Bridge and the Royal Albert Bridge, made available through Bloomberg Connects, the arts and culture app. The guide covers the learning centre at Bridging the Tamar, the 20th century Tamar Bridge and Brunel’s 19th century Royal Albert Bridge, and it is built around behind-the-scenes content from the visitor centre’s heritage officers and volunteers.

It works two ways. Visitors can use it on site to add to a trip, or anyone, anywhere, can open it remotely to learn about the history and engineering of the two crossings. The guide takes users behind the scenes on the design, construction and ongoing story of the bridges, with first-hand perspectives from the people who look after them. On site, the advice is to bring headphones, then either browse the guide’s homepage or follow its interactive map around the exhibitions, the two bridges and the grounds.

New content will be added at regular intervals, so repeat visitors have fresh stories to find through the year.

In some famous company

Bridging the Tamar now sits alongside some of the best known cultural names in the world on the same app. Institutions offering guides on Bloomberg Connects include the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, the Guggenheim Museum and, closer to home, The Box in Plymouth.

Jane Cooper, Visitor Experience Manager at Tamar Crossings, said: “We are really excited about how our digital guide allows us to share more of our archive with the public. We hope that the new features made possible through the guide, such as the bridges audio tour, will help to engage more people with learning about the important heritage of these iconic structures.”

What Bloomberg Connects is

Bloomberg Connects is a free arts and culture app created by Bloomberg Philanthropies. It offers expert-curated digital guides to more than 1,500 museums, galleries, sculpture parks, gardens and cultural spaces around the world, at no charge. The app gathers thousands of hours of audio, video and text content, with new material added every month, and it lets people explore at their own pace through quick highlights or longer deep dives, on site or from home, downloaded for offline use anywhere.

Accessibility sits at the centre of the design. The app has built-in voiceover support, captions and audio transcripts, image zoom and adjustable font sizes. It is free for both visitors and partner institutions, with Bloomberg Philanthropies providing training, marketing and technical support so cultural organisations can offer digital experiences to their visitors and to a global audience.

Visitor information

Bridging the Tamar’s visitor centre is open daily, 10am to 4pm, with free entry, at Pemros Road, St Budeaux, Plymouth, PL5 1LP. The Visitor and Learning Centre opened in 2019 and tells the heritage of both bridges.

The free digital and audio guide can be opened at any time through Bloomberg Connects, or via the free Bloomberg Connects app. More about visiting is at www.bridgingthetamar.org.uk.

The Tamar Bridge and Torpoint Ferry are run by the Tamar Bridge and Torpoint Ferry Joint Committee, a local government committee made up of five councillors from each of Plymouth City Council and Cornwall Council. The two authorities first joined forces in 1950 to build a bridge across the lower Tamar and to take joint possession of the Torpoint Ferry, which until then was owned solely by Cornwall County Council.