Heritage relies on storytelling. Try to explain the heritage of a space, a structure, or a city without telling a story – it is nearly impossible. Stories provide meaning and elevate physical spaces into meaningful places. For centuries, humans have told and retold the victories, tragedies and grandeur of places like The Great Wall of China, the Acropolis at Athens and Constantinople. Stories about places motivate us to travel, to defend, to wage war or to preserve for the enjoyment of future generations.
Traditionally, paintings, drawings, the spoken word and books have all carried narratives about places from generation to generation. These artefacts, although precious and deliberate, have typically offered only singular points of view with clear distinctions between storyteller and consumer and accessing them has been difficult or expensive.
By contrast today, stories are abundant, accessible, on-demand and told from multiple points of view. For instance, a search on Instagram for ‘#tajmahal’ garners hundreds of thousands of posts from individuals sharing Taj Mahal-related stories with larger scale audiences than ever before. This new age of storytelling is radically transforming our relationships with places by breaking down stereotypes, promoting global empathy and inviting a larger group to both create and consume stories.
As novelist and writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie argues in her TedTalk, “The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete... It makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult.”
Crowd-contributed storytelling services boost global empathy while also inspiring users to explore the world. What if all cultures and backgrounds made their stories accessible to everyone? The audio tour platform and marketplace ‘Detour’ introduces new perspectives from locals, including a woman at the Medina of Marrakech who guides users past snake charmers and monkey trainers. An app called ‘Findery’ encourages travellers worldwide to leave notes and photos about the places they’ve been to and discover new places through others’ posts.
Perhaps architects will intentionally design the stories they want their users to tell. Imagine a building designed specifically to go viral on Instagram
Storytelling services also break down financial and socio-economic barriers, helping to voice untold stories. Consider museums or nonprofits that cannot afford to develop or promote their own storytelling apps. For free, they can use ‘Vamonde’, a platform for hyper-local stories and memories, to share their narratives with new audiences.
This unprecedented documentation and dissemination of narratives leads to triumphs of increased awareness, understanding and exposure, but it also creates challenges for storytellers and consumers, making it difficult to stand out and easy to feel overwhelmed. A significant story can become diluted by social media feeds, displayed as just one of an endless number of stories. Service Designers and UX Designers need to help users navigate and digest this oversaturation while also preserving the art of storytelling.
What will be the impact of collaborative storytelling services on architecture and preservation? Perhaps architects will intentionally design the stories they want their users to tell. Imagine a building designed specifically to go viral on Instagram. Maybe story platforms could replace post-occupancy studies and we will demolish or preserve buildings based on the number of ‘likes’ they receive. It is difficult to predict how preservationists and historians will sift through these endless story catalogues to synthesise their own historical narratives. Only time will tell whether today’s headlines will become tomorrow’s heritage.
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Walking in each other’s steps through Vamonde
Every story is based somewhere. It is natural for us to share our stories and places with loved ones and hear about theirs. We are fundamentally curious and may even investigate where others’ stories take place with questions like “How did it look?” or “What did it feel like?” Vamonde, a new start-up, builds off from the need to follow in each other’s footsteps. It is a platform for creating, sharing and archiving hyper-local stories and memories.
Anyone – locals, tourists, museums and businesses – can create or download multimedia ‘adventures,’ described as ‘playlists for places.’ The service began with Chicago-based adventures when it launched in Fall 2015, and the start-up plans to expand to cities all over the world. CEO and Founder, Anijo Mathew explains, “The goal is to become the world’s largest exchange of location-based narratives.”
Additional info: www.vamonde.com
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