Two local creative talents, Naresh Kaushal and Patricia Lalla, have been recruited to work on StoryTrails, a unique immersive storytelling experience coming to Lambeth, as part of UNBOXED: Creativity in the UK, a ground-breaking UK-wide 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 Lambeth. 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 Lambeth on 10th-11th September. 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.

Naresh Kaushal will be making an interactive immersive map of Lambeth. Naresh has spent the last three years helping to steer 81 Acts of Exuberant Defiance, a community project commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Brixton Riots. As a result, they are particularly proud of “the independent, rebellious spirit,” of Lambeth’s inhabitants. Naresh is keen to highlight the potential of the immersive technology, emphasising that “It’s not just the fact it’s using cutting edge technology, it’s the fact that it is a platform for telling untold stories in a dynamic, vibrant and authentic way.”

Joining Naresh is Patricia Lalla, who has been recruited to make an augmented reality story trail around Lambeth. She recently worked on an AR app which used music and heritage to explore the Windrush Generation’s experiences in London. Patricia wants to pay tribute to the adult education facilities in Lambeth, saying “I took an evening class in TV Production at Morley College which helped get my foot in the door, which was brilliant because I had no connections to the media.” She is also eager to explore the borough’s complex past, explaining “As a proud Londoner, I am also excited to illuminate lesser known historical stories from the capital.”

Patricia and Naresh 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 10-11 September audiences will be guided through an immersive tour of Lambeth as they explore stories across virtual and augmented reality and via a series of installations created by Naresh and Patricia.

Outside Brixton 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 Naresh and Patricia 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.

StoryTrails is one of 10 major creative projects commissioned as part of UNBOXED: Creativity in the UK, which is taking place across England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales in 2022. The UK’s most ambitious showcase of creative collaboration includes free large-scale events, installations and globally accessible digital experiences, and an extensive learning programme, which aims to reach millions of schoolchildren.

UNBOXED: Creativity in the UK is funded and supported by the four governments of the UK and is commissioned and delivered in partnership with Belfast City Council, Creative Wales and EventScotland.

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.”