Ep 11: Bringing to life the stories of Australia's regional towns ft. Hamish Sewell

The Sense of Place Podcast

“Irrespective of technology, digital placement is first and foremost a human centered practice that is concerned with improving relationships between people and places. It embraces collaboration, a co-creation design approach and encourages community participation.”

— JO REID, LEADING UK DEVELOPERS CALVIUM

This is a quote taken from the website of Hamish Sewell, today’s guest. I think it sums up nicely Hamish’s work and approach to audio-based story telling which bridges the gap between people and place. Hamish is from Queensland, Australia and has a background in radio and oral history. He has worked on several projects which connect people to their place.

Hamish is the creator of the app Soundtrails – an audio project which uses geolocative technology to bring to life the towns and stories of ordinary people in Australia!

We begin the episode by getting more detail on how soundtrails works, and why Hamish created it. The appeal of telling ‘ordinary’ communities’ stories and the creative protentional of using geolocative story telling (e.g. being able to adapt novellas into real life situations).

We then get into what drew Hamish to his work - wanting to express the connection between people and their place, the importance of meaning making, and memory making, and much more!

(Recorded December 2019)