Love Newmilns App, East Ayrshire

Powered by our Trailify platform, the app gives community groups and local trusts a reliable, high-performance product with the flexibility to manage and update town trails directly in-house, ensuring Newmilns’ extraordinary industrial legacy and community stories continue to inspire future generations.

Supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, the Newmilns Regeneration Association and Newmilns Heritage Group commissioned Aerial Digital to create a dedicated digital companion for the historic East Ayrshire burgh. Renowned internationally for its intricate lace manufacturing and textile craftsmanship, the town sought a fresh, interactive medium that would reconnect residents with their industrial past, encourage active exploration along the River Irvine, and provide visitors with compelling reasons to explore the area's heritage.

The application weaves together multiple self-guided journeys, including an architectural Town Centre Trail, an extensive Industrial Heritage walk charting the former textile mills, and a dedicated Football Heritage Trail celebrating the town's pioneering sporting history. An interactive timeline stretches from 12 AD through centuries of Covenanter struggles to the industrial boom, enriched by oral history recordings and archival footage. To bridge the gap where historic structures have been lost to time, we utilised generative AI to carefully reconstruct 19th-century street scenes, pairing them alongside authentic photographic archives to deliver striking then-and-now visual comparisons directly on visitors' devices.

Designed to engage all generations, the guide features interactive Eye Spy challenges throughout the streets and an educational graveyard hunt around Loudoun Parish Church, encouraging young families to observe architectural details they might otherwise walk straight past. Built on our Trailify platform, the app also integrates an active town directory linking directly to local independent shops, cafes, and community organisations, providing the regeneration trust with an autonomous, living digital hub that actively supports the local high street.