Walking Cinema

01/21/2025

Hey Everyone, Happy MLK Day! I'm very proud to announce the release of "Day of Days": http://www.dayofdayspodcast.com. It's a podcast and an augmented reality app about the mystical side of MLK's leadership. The story focuses on his relatively unknown mentor, Howard Thurman who came to visit King after he was stabbed at a book signing in Harlem in 1958. The conversation they had in that hospital room helped King explore a new, meditational component of leadership and find a way to bridge the gap between a mass movement and internal transformation. The AR app and the podcast are free and supported by a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Let me know what you think!

01/05/2025

Next Sunday, the 12th of January, I will be speaking at the
FIRST UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST SOCIETY OF SAN FRANCISCO about two Walking Cinema projects in the Fillmore neighborhood that look to make its history more evocative using immersive theater, AR, and soundwalks. Please join us at 9am for a breakfast and 9:30am for the talk and discussion!

https://www.uusf.org/forum

If you can't make it in person the link below has the Zoom link!

forum

04/06/2023

Our immersive tour of Southwest, D.C., Before the Bulldozers, has earned the distinction of Honoree in the Public Service & Activism category of the Metaverse, Immersive & Virtual section. As recognized by the International Academy of Digital Arts & Science, this is a huge achievement for us and ! Honoree is granted to only the top 20% of the nearly 14,000 projects submitted in this year’s competition.

We need your help, though! The Webby People’s Voice Award is voted on by the online public.

VOTE at the link! https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting #/2023/metaverse-immersive-virtual/general-virtual-experiences/public-service-activism

You have until Thursday, April 20th to vote, so get your votes in now!

03/15/2023

Reminder that applications for the online course "History Around Us" are due by 11:59 PST March 15th

In "History Around Us," we'll be targeting museum professionals, historic site personnel, and all kinds of storytellers interested in creating site-specific narratives. Our goal is to expand the community creating such work and learn from new approaches. The course will use off-the-shelf Adobe software (Audition, Photoshop and Aero) and each student will end up with a prototype project that can be expanded on or used as the basis for a grant application.

It's a month-long course that starts May 1. We hope to bring together a diverse group of folks who work with cultural institutions either in a formal or project-based way. Preference will be given to applicants currently employed by a museum, historical site, or other cultural institution. Applicants are not required to have any technical expertise, but should have a specific area or community in mind for their site-based audio/AR project.

Link to apply: https://forms.gle/qByAPyzDj4C9dNNc7

This should take less than 5 minutes, but please fill out by March 15th.

The course costs $800, but no one will be refused for lack of funds. Our goal is to limit attendance for this course to 10 students with diverse story concepts and geographies.

Hi there and thanks for responding to our call for participants for Walking Cinema's first course in site-specific storytelling. This course will focus on museum and cultural site professionals who want to create smartphone-based audio and augmented reality walks in communities that connect to their...

02/28/2023

The production team at Walking Cinema, in partnership with Adobe, is putting together a month long course called “History Around Us” that will bring together 10 hand-picked partners from diverse museum and cultural organizations together to learn how to develop smartphone-based audio and augmented reality stories. This immersive approach to cultural exploration is becoming a popular way to involve diverse communities and use cutting edge technology to tell site-specific stories.

This course titled “History Around Us” is built on Walking Cinema's award-winning process of creating immersive audio and augmented reality walks for museum, civic, and nonprofit organizations.

Who's it for?

Do you work in migrant communities? Environmental science? Urban design? No technical expertise, but have already researched and maybe developed a story that is site-specific?

Do your students, visitors, or community members want to explore local history in a new and engaging way? Do you want to develop immersive media that extends your exhibits to the surrounding neighborhood?
This course is for you.

What will you learn?

In addition to gathering skills in place-based story development, course participants will work with like-minded colleagues from around the world to develop compelling stories with unique neighborhoods, historic sites, and communities at their center.

When's it happening?

The course will be starting in the Spring of 2023 we're accepting applications now. Fees will be along a sliding scale. The course will meet weekly for four weeks, with 90 minutes of Zoom class per week, and assigned learning and producing. Participants will be expected to dedicate an average of 5 hours per week to the course.

How do I sign up?

Fill out the survey by March 15th if you're interested in the course, to tell us who you are and what kind of project you’re interested in developing!

https://forms.gle/6DsuTgWymNNA1FZ46

Feel free to email elissa@walkingcinema.org with any questions you have.

02/25/2023

In our immersive audio walking tours, we incorporate physical touchstones, working with local businesses. In our new tour of the Mission district of San Francisco, we have three instillations set up and ready for you to experience! If you want to check out the tours yourself, head to calmigration.org

5 Likes, 1 Comments - Walking Cinema ◆ Storytelling () on Instagram: "In our immersive audio walking tours, we incorporate physical touchstones, working with local businesses. In our new tour of the Mission district of San Francisco, we have three instillations set up and ready for y...

02/22/2023

Are you in SF?

Head to the Mission to experience our immersive audio tour, released just last week! Explore what SF's coffee industry has to do with a long history of Salvadoran migration, the birth of Sanctuary Cities, and the struggle to keep the neighborhood Latinx.

This tour, and two others, are available to download for free on the California Migration Museum app, available on the App Store and Google Play.

https://www.calmigration.org/migrantfootsteps

02/17/2023

Very excited to announce the launch of our latest project, Migrant Footsteps, a series of three immersive audio tours in San Francisco neighborhoods.

https://www.calmigration.org/migrantfootsteps

Use this link to download the FREE app and take the tour yourself.

Made with the California Migration Museum, these immersive, multi sensory walk bring history to life with music, story, augmented reality, and installations. Thank you to Alex Wong, La Doña, IDHAZ, and all of our other collaborators and partners on these tours.

02/02/2023

A few weeks ago, a few members of the Walking Cinema team had the chance to see perform live at along with . Alex has been working with us on our upcoming walking tour of San Francisco's Chinatown—scripting, narrating, and writing and recording original music for the story.

It was such an honor to hear Alex talk about our project and his personal connection to it! Listen to the clip to learn more, and you can learn more about Alex's music at alexwongsounds.com

01/27/2023

We're getting so close to having our installations complete for our California Migration Museum walking tours! Here is the director of the museum, Katy Long, in front of a record player that we installed at Cliff's Hardware in the Castro as part of our walking tour of the neighborhood. You can check out the record player in the back of Cliff's now for a sneak peak of the tour.

We'll make an announcement here when the full tours are available to be walked! Stay tuned.

01/25/2023

Our collaborator Andrea Jones, Associate Director of Education from the Smithsonian's Anacostia Community Museum, spoke at this year's 2022 Smithsonian National Education Summit about "Museums of the Streets: Learn how to activate everyday places as sites of learning, joy, reflection, and healing." Our newest walking tour, Before the Bulldozers, got a shout out!

To listen to the full panel, click on the link here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-RioRQm0k8&list=PLFGZwzyPnxTv2mAisSfJd674mGBp3T2p2&index=25

01/16/2023

We are finishing up the final touches for our upcoming tours with the museum. A few weeks ago we had California Migration Museum founder Katy Long in the recording studio at @ to record her host narration. The tours are free, virtual walking tours of San Francisco: “Chinatown: The Spaces In-Between,” “The Castro: Finding Home,” and “The Mission: Coffee Country” will be available to download via the App Store in February.