StoryTrails – Swindon

Last year I was invited to take part in a project called StoryTrails. Fifteen locations across the UK were represented in this immersive storytelling project. Events in Swindon included an augmented reality trail called ‘Snapping Swindon with the Hoopers’, which involved visiting present day locations and viewing them as photographers William and Mary Hooper saw them a hundred years ago.

The other part of the project was a series of short interviews with local people talking about the places in Swindon that have a special meaning for them.

I met Lucinda in the cemetery on a beautifully sunny, but rather windy spring day. where we grappled with some unfamiliar technology (I was her first interviewee) and tried to capture the birdsong.

You can read all about the project on the StoryTrails website, which is full of futuristic phrases such as ‘3D dioramas’, ‘immersive installations’ and ’emotional geography,’ but if you don’t understand what all that actually means you can click on to this link. Here you will find not only me but a whole cast of local people talking about Swindon. My favourites include Lee who talks about growing up in The Limes, a boy’s home in Upper Stratton; Nancy, who speaks so movingly about her husband Ashley and the Prospect Hospice, and Martha who loves living in her little house in the Railway Village.