Two local creative talents, Michelle Hudson and Nina Perry, have been recruited to work on StoryTrails, a unique immersive storytelling experience coming to Lewisham as part of UNBOXED: Creativity in the UK, a ground-breaking UK-wide celebration of creativity in 2022.
StoryTrails allows local people to experience their town in a completely new way through the magic of augmented and virtual reality. People will be able to use this new technology to travel back in time, experiencing untold local histories from Lewisham. These stories will be brought to life in the places where they happened, reanimating public spaces and creating a free, entertaining and playful family-friendly experience. StoryTrails will visit just 15 locations across the UK, including Lewisham on 17-18 September, in its year of tenure as the Mayor’s London Borough of Culture. Led by the National Centre for Immersive Storytelling: StoryFutures Academy, the StoryTrails project has recruited the best and brightest creative talent from the local area to showcase the stories of this community as part of the UK’s largest ever immersive storytelling project.
Michelle Hudson has lived in Lewisham since 2014, and has been recruited to make an augmented reality story trail around her borough. During the pandemic, Michelle produced Manimals, a digital theatre performance which sold out its UK run and received rave reviews from critics. Michelle says that “Lewisham is the most diverse place I’ve ever lived, and has a sense of community that cuts across class and race. Coming from small-town Canada, I love the energy of the place and how people look out for each other, despite living in such a big city.” She is particularly excited about the opportunity to develop her knowledge on the project, explaining “I can’t wait to learn relevant technical skills and to develop a much deeper understanding of how these new technologies can tell stories in novel ways.”
Joining Michelle will be Nina Perry, who has lived in Lewisham since 2005 and will be making an interactive immersive map of the borough. Nina is a creative freelancer who is currently producing a Sunday feature for BBC Radio 3 called ‘A New Art – Modernism and the Radio Feature.’ She says “I love that Lewisham is home to a full rainbow of humanity, and it has the best green spaces. It’s enlivening but you can always find pockets of peacefulness.” She believes the project will help democratise storytelling, stating “StoryTrails gives me the opportunity to explore the potential of how new technology can be creatively utilised to share stories within my own community.”
Michelle and Nina are part of a team of 50 emerging creative media practitioners who will participate in the StoryTrails project, telling the stories of 15 communities through state-of-the-art immersive technologies in new and surprising ways. These include 17 practitioners creating augmented reality (AR) story trails across city centres and 15 building immersive installations which will map the emotional geography of a location. In addition, nine creatives will develop the virtual reality (VR) experiences and nine will take on a professional placement in one of the StoryTrails partner organisations.
The practitioners will be working with unprecedented access to archive material from the BFI, national and regional film archives across the UK as well as the BBC, with the goal of reimagining the UK’s screen heritage for the future. Full training in immersive technologies, such as augmented reality and 3Dscanning, has been provided. They will be supported throughout their journey by experienced producers.
On 17-18 September audiences will be guided through an immersive tour of Lewisham as they explore stories across virtual and augmented reality and via a series of installations created by Michelle and Nina.
Outside Lewisham Library, participants will enter the virtual story portal to begin the StoryTrails experience, guided by a free mobile AR app and local performers. Using stunning AR experiences that remix the BFI and BBC archive, local people will experience history where it actually happened, revitalising the streets upon which they stand with new voices and untold stories of the past. Inside the library, participants will be immersed in a virtual map of their town that will be made up of 3D models and audio stories captured on location. They will also have the opportunity to explore further stories via bespoke virtual reality experiences.
Professor James Bennett, Director of StoryFutures and StoryTrails, said: “StoryTrails is a massively ambitious project as we travel across the UK to discover unknown, surprising and intriguing stories from local communities. We’re excited to work with local creative talent like Nina and Michelle to uncover and bring these hidden histories to life, creating a new sense of belonging and immersing audiences in an amazing new way to see themselves, their communities, their towns and country.”
StoryTrails is led by StoryFutures Academy, the UK’s National Centre for Immersive Storytelling. The centre is at the forefront of training and up-skilling creative media professionals in the use of the next generation of storytelling tools. It is run by Royal Holloway, University of London and the National Film and Television School (NFTS). StoryFutures Academy wants to ensure that the UK’s creative industries are not only the best trained in the use of these game-changing technologies but that the future workforce properly represents the full diversity of UK talent.
TV presenter and historian Professor David Olusoga, Executive Producer for StoryTrails, said: “I am thrilled to be working with StoryFutures to help bring about change in the diversity of our creative industries. By enabling 50 diverse creative voices to create compelling stories that combine past, present and future through the magic of immersive technologies, we’ll be mapping a new path for creativity in this country. StoryTrails will set the public’s imagination alight with experiences that use the poetry of history to inspire a new vision of our future.”
For further details visit story-trails.com and via Facebook and Instagram @StoryTrailsProject and Twitter @StoryFuturesA and @StoryFutures