Postcode Stories: Run Your Own Challenge

Run your own Challenge

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What is Postcode Stories?

Postcode Stories is a location-based story challenge in which teams create their own

guided tour to a neighbourhood.

This guide enables facilitators to run their own Postcode Stories challenge in an easy step-by-

step format, tailored to their setting.

The How-To pack also includes 1-Page Guides to using each of the technical tools described

and templates for content.

Further assistance can be delivered by the Postcode Stories team.

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How it works:1. Teams find and create location-based stories (fictional or non-fictional) using a pack of cards

which helps them through the process of selecting locations, story themes and ideas.

2. They develop their ideas into a narrative plotted onto a map, on which the stories unfold

from point to point.

3. They bring their stories to life through audio recording and imagery, using simple digital

tools.

3. They share their stories and invite people to experience them as an alternative audio guided

walking tour. This can be in situ as an MP3 / online audio, on a website using googlemaps, or

in a printed / drawn map tour guide

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In this kit you will find:

The step-by-step plan for facilitators, in this set of cards.

Templates for creating the cards which help participants choose their story themes and ideas.

Story creation guides and inspiration words to help transform initial ideas into fully-fledged

narratives.

1-page guides showing facilitators how to use all of the digital tools suggested in this kit.

A template for creating printed maps.

Setting up your challenge:

Decide when you will run the sessions: it could be as part of a lesson, at a series of weekly /

monthly meetings, or an intensive one-day / two day workshop...

Set a minimum of 1 hour to complete each of the 5 chapters. The more time you have, the

richer the output.

Work out your team’s technical abilities and the equipment available to you, so you can decide whether to follow digital or non-digital steps.

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What you need:The challenge is inexpensive to run, and if you are part of an organisation / school you are likely to be able to access everything needed for free. If the cost is to be covered by your

group it should only be around £10 to prepare all the things needed for 20 participants.

The basic content includes printouts of maps, printouts / digital prints of photos, and printouts of the templates in this kit.

If you are running a digital version of the challenge this can also be achieved

inexpensively using free software on internet-enabled phones. Other kit including

computers / cameras / tablets will be needed for a more advanced version, and if you want to

create a website for your challenge this may have additional costs.

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On your marks, get set...

Before you start make sure you have read through all of the cards in this deck, and have checked out the 1-Page Guides to any digital

tools you plan to use.

Depending on the number of participants we recommend no more than 6 per team so everyone can be involved in the creative

process. You can have any number of teams.

If you as facilitator are deciding on the teams you may wish to ensure a mixture of extroverted and quieter people are

partnered, as each team will need at least one person who is happy to be vocal.

For inspiration, listen to the stories on postcodestories.co.uk and play them to your

group if you like.

CHAPTER 1:

Preparation

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ChecklistIn this preparatory chapter you will:

- Choose the geographical area your stories will cover.

- Take photos of local places - or get the teams to take photos

- Plot the photo locations onto maps.

- Create your deck of cards for teams: Theme Cards, Picture Cards and Knowledge Cards.

For this chapter you might need:

- 1-Page Guide to Twitpic

- 1-Page Guide to Flickr

- Cards templates

The local safari Go out and take photos of local places for story

inspiration, using a camera or mobile phone.

Before you go, decide on the geographical area your stories will cover. If you want the groups to take the pictures themselves, which can enhance

the challenge, try choosing a smaller more doable radius, or even limit yourself to one street. If you are going to take the photos

yourself you may want to venture out wider. We chose a 1km radius.

Pictures can be of anything that looks interesting or might make a good story point - from an

abandoned building to a garden gnome.

As you take photos make sure you take a note of their locations. You could take a photocopy of

an A-Z page and mark where things are, or if you are using a smartphone you could use a geo-

tagging photo site like Twitpic which gives you the option to include location data. (see the 1-Page Guide to Twitpic) 1110

Get historicalIf you want to add a layer of local history to your stories there are two simple ways to

do this:

1 -Talk to the people you see as you go around taking pictures. This could be the

local librarian / shop owner / pub landlord , anyone who has lived in the area for a while. You never know what true stories you might

uncover!

2 - Go online and use a search engine like google to look for your area’s name or

postcode together with the words ‘history’ or social history, or look for anything in your

area that might be protected by National Trust / English Heritage.

Create your map Once you have your photo-set, you need printed maps of the area which flag-up the

locations of all your photos.

A very simple way is to enlarge a photocopy of the relevant page in an A-Z, then put

numbered stickers over the locations of the pictures you have taken, making sure you give the location and the image the same number. Covering the maps with sticky-back plastic

means groups can draw on them.

If your group is digitally literate you can use online geotagged maps. You could upload your pictures to Flickr and use the ‘Add this photo to your map’ option. You can then print the map page which automatically includes the

location points.

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Create your cardsThis challenge uses three types of cards:

THEME, PICTURE, and KNOWLEDGE. Each team in the group should be given their own

set of cards to work from.

To create your THEME cards think about what is relevant and interesting to

participants. You could chose completely fanciful themes such as time travel or ghost stories, or topical issues such as local life or families. We recommend at least 3-5 theme

options. Once confirmed, you can also find images

that explain the theme to use as the front of the cards.

On the back of the theme cards write the name of the theme - and add some thought starters to help people. For example a ghost

theme might say: ‘maybe they have unfinished business...’.

Picture cardsTo create your PICTURE cards start by

printing your location photos.

You could use simply a home printer, or a developing service at a place like Snappy Snaps, or an instant printing booth (try

larger Boots stores) where you attach your phone or camera for instant photo prints.

On the back of your printed pictures make sure you write the location number as on

the maps.

You can also write some story inspiration on the back - look at the picture and think of the questions that might aid the creative

thought process. These would generally start with: why, what, where, how,

who, when.

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Did you know?Any interesting local information you

discovered can be turned into KNOWLEDGE CARDS. Put each piece of information on its own card with the title

‘did you know’. If the content is relevant to a particular photo or location you might also want to number it accordingly on the map.

We suggest you print out all cards the same size, although this is not necessary.

KNOWLEDGE and THEME cards can also be printed out by photo developers should you wish: simply save your file as a PDF and load

it onto a USB or a CD.

You can find a template for all cards in the Templates download file.

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Asking Questions from a Location Photo, an example:

Why is the church boarded up? What happened here?

Who built it and when?What’s behind the gates?

CHAPTER 2:

Structuring your story

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Pick a card...At the start of this session all groups should

have a map in front of them.

First up, give each team their THEME cards and give them around 5 minutes to choose a theme.

With their chosen THEME card in front of them, the groups should then receive the

PICTURE cards and the KNOWLEDGE cards.

Within a chosen timeframe each team must choose the pictures that they want to use for

their tour. From the wider pool the team should pick roughly one photo per person. You may decide to use more or less, depending on

the time you have available for the whole challenge.

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ChecklistIn this chapter teams will:

Choose the theme for their stories

Choose their photos that make up the story locations

Plot their locations onto a map

Start to develop story ideas out of each picture

For this chapter you might need:

The inspiration words

Starting the stories With the theme decided and the picture cards

chosen the teams can start coming up with their story ideas.

We recommend having paper / post-it notes available and giving the teams at least half an

hour. During this they should:

- look in detail at each photo and develop possibilities on what might have happened here

- look at where the pictures are on the map

- think about connections and similarities between the pictures

- plot the order and route of their tour - where does their story start and end?

To help get the creative juices flowing you can print out the page of inspiration words

(found in the Templates download file)

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CHAPTER 3:

CREATING STORIES

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ChecklistIn this chapter teams will:

Develop their individual picture stories

Connect the stories together into an overall tour that makes narrative sense

Test out their stories so far by reading them to their team.

For this chapter you might need:

- Story creation template

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The story arcOnce the teams have decided initial story ideas

and the order of their images, it is time to develop a full story arc.

This means developing the plot, looking at how and where the ideas link, and fleshing out the

ideas into engaging stories.

This is slightly different to traditional story development as these will make up a tour, so the physical location is an important element. The team needs to decide what the thread is

that links the locations together. Is it a character? A period in time? An occurrence?

Stories can be as short or long as the teams choose, and obviously the less time the

challenge has to run, the less story development will be possible.

Get excitingTo help with this process you could get the teams to think about the questions that the

story is answering and what makes it exciting as a tour for someone to follow:

• What is hidden in the photo?• What happened and what journey did the character/s go on to get there?• How did this lead to what you see before you now?

Each story point needs to be an episode in the overall narrative, with its own beginning,

middle and end.

To assist the teams you may want to give them one of the story creation templates

included in the Templates download file. These templates enable all the main points in

the story to be plotted down.

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Get feedbackOnce the stories are more formed we

suggest that a team member reads them out to the team. This will help identify anything they feel doesn’t make sense or they want

to change.

Remember the final stories are a tour so listening to them and understanding them is

important!

CHAPTER 4:

Storytelling

Scripting Once the teams have their ideas formed they need to craft these into a script for the tour.

This includes thinking about how to introduce each audio clip and its relevance to where the listener might be standing. For example you

might begin by saying: ‘In front of you you can see .....’ or ‘You are standing at the exact spot

where .....’

The teams should take some time to finalise their scripts, adding or changing sections as

they read through them.

When reading through the scripted story it is also a good idea to think about how to bring the story alive with your voice. Participants may want to mark the words they want to

emphasise / places to breathe. It is important to think about how someone listening will

hear the story.

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ChecklistIn this chapter teams will:

Put their stories into a script for recording

Record their stories in audio

Research further images to enhance their stories

For this chapter you might need:

- 1-Page Guide to Flickr

- 1-Page Guide to Audio recording

- 1-Page Guide to YouTube

Once the scripts are complete the stories are ready to be recorded.

You can use a variety of free or cheap applications for phones / laptops / portable

devices, which let you record directly onto the device, and either upload live to the internet or

save the files onto the device itself. We recommend trying Soundcloud or Audioboo.

Alternatively you can use a dictaphone, or even create videos instead of audio and upload these

to YouTube.

Participants can either decide to each record a section of the story, or one or two members

may want to record it all.

An extra stage in the storytelling challenge is finding images online that help to bring the

stories to life. For this teams should be sure to use creative-commons images which can be

searched for easily using Flickr. (for how to do this see the 1-Page Guide to Flickr)

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Create a script to tell the story of a Location, an example:

‘This may look like any abandoned church,’ but ....

‘Standing in front of the boarded up church you would never guess that...’

‘This church was once....’

CHAPTER 5:

SHARING YOUR STORIES

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Get uploading Once all the stories are recorded and saved it is time to upload the content. If you have been using Audioboo or Soundcloud there will have

been an option to upload directly.

When uploading be sure to give your recording a title so that it is easy to find again. For example give the story name and then a

reference to the chapter of the story. (see the 1-Page Guide to audio uploading)

If you recorded using software that doesn’t automatically share content online, make sure it

is all emailed to one place so it can then be uploaded to the internet manually.

ChecklistIn this chapter you or your team members will:

Upload the audio stories to a computer or the internet and name them

and optionally....

Plot them on a google mapShare the stories through offline and/or online

channelsCreate a physical print map

Enjoy their creations!

For this chapter you might need:

- 1-Page Guide to Flickr

- 1-Page Guide to audio uploading

- 1-Page Guide to YouTube

- 1-Page Guide to Googlemaps

- Printed map template

Get sharingTo share this content you could:

Download the audio from the website or Soundcloud (or similar) into an MP3 which

you can play directly in iTunes or Quicktime.

Put all the stories onto a CD and give a copy to participants.

Put all the stories in a zipfolder (in the correct story order) and upload them to your

website - or your organisation’s website.

Attach the MP3 files an email attachment and send it to people.

Plot your audio into a googlemap (see how to do this on the 1-Page Guide to googlemaps).

More ways to shareSharing doesn’t have to be digital.

You could also:

- Host a storytelling event and either play the content or read them live- Run the stories as an event for a local festival - Organise a walking tour to all the story locations- Share the stories with your local radio station

You can also design your own printed tour map for people to use. Head to the

Postcode Stories homepage where you can download the map that we created for the Kings Norton challenge, and see the map template in the Templates folder that you

use to make your own version.

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and now....

ENJOY YOUR TOURS!

If you would like to reward your participants for all their hard work you can find a special Postcode Stories certificate template in the Templates folder.

We’d love to hear about your Postcode Stories challenges - if you want to share them or for us to upload them to the website let us know at [email protected]

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If you want to run a digital version of Postcode Stories but don’t have the technical skills, get in touch and we can run a workshop to teach you all you need to know.

Be sure to check out the 1-Page Guides too, these will show you how to use audio uploading tools, googlemaps, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr.