Three local creative talents, Joseph Doubtfire, Leo Mercer and Kezi Gardom, have been recruited to work on StoryTrails, a unique immersive storytelling experience coming to Blackpool, as part of UNBOXED: Creativity in the UK, a ground-breaking nationwide 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 Blackpool. 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 Blackpool on 16-17 July. 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.
Joseph Doubtfire has worked as an artist in Blackpool for over half a decade, and has been recruited to make an augmented reality story trail around the town. Joseph is an artist and lecturer at the Blackpool School of Arts, who has collaborated with Abingdon Studios and London Conference of Critical Thought, and recently featured in the exhibition Watch This Space. He said “Having worked as an artist and lecturer in Blackpool for the last five years, I love how the town constantly surprises me.”
Working alongside Joseph is Leo Mercer. Leo is a writer and creative producer who has founded his own music company, leo&hyde, and recently produced a Gogglebox-inspired adaptation of The Marriage of Figaro which won rave reviews. Leo loves Blackpool for its optimism, saying that there’s a “sense that the golden days are ahead, not behind.”
Joining Joseph and Leo is Kezi Gardom, who will be making an interactive immersive map of Blackpool. Kezi has previously worked on Tamworth AR Explorer, bringing Tamworth Castle to life through technology, as well as helping the youth theatre organisation ReACT Youth Theatre during her MA at Goldsmiths. She says “You can’t match the Blackpool attitude – friendly, generous and not afraid to call a spade a spade.” Kezi’s particularly excited about the chance to highlight the town’s history, explaining “Blackpool has always been about bringing extraordinary experiences to everybody. StoryTrails Blackpool will be doing just this, using Blackpool’s own stories to make something amazing!”
Joseph, Leo and Kezi 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 16-17 July audiences will be guided through an immersive tour of Blackpool as they explore stories across virtual and augmented reality and via a series of installations created by Joseph, Leo and Kezi.
Outside Blackpool’s Central 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 Joseph, Leo and Kezi 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
