Explore stories of passion and resilience at Soundtrails audio walk

Discover the hidden voices of Southern Cross University staff and students and hear their stories of resilience, passion and success as you follow an immersive audio walk across the Lismore campus.

Southern Cross University launched the Cubewalk Soundtrails, an immersive, documentary-based audio walk across the Lismore campus, today during Session 2 Orientation Week.

The audio walk adds a new layer to the SCU Cubewalk, a network of interactive cubes launched on the Lismore campus in 2015.

Using the Soundtrails mobile app and wearing earphones, you will experience 12 richly designed audio stories as you walk around the campus. The Soundtrails app uses GPS to automatically play the stories as you make your way from one cube to the next.

The narratives of resilience, passion and success are designed to generate a sense of engagement and belonging for listeners. They include a Welcome to Country from Bundjalung elder Aunty Irene Harrington and stories from arts, science and law students, an elite athlete studying biomedical science, as well as the University’s environmental scientists.

This latest project is a collaboration between Research Fellow and CubeWalk creator David Rousell and SCU journalism lecturer and CubeWalk Soundtrail project producer Jeanti St Clair.

Bachelor of Media students produced these documentaries under the guidance of Jeanti St Clair earlier this year as one of their assessment tasks in the Making Radio unit.

“Locative audio walks are the next big thing for radio and audio producers,” Jeanti said. “And the CubeWalk Soundtrail provided a real world opportunity for SCU media students to get a taste for this new documentary application.

“We challenged students to capture the essence of each person’s story and to create a 3D sonic story to support the narrative. I’m exceedingly proud of their efforts.”

The CubeWalk Soundtrail has been funded through federal government’s Higher Education Participation and Partnership Program (HEPPP), which supports projects that assist in the retention and success of students from low SES backgrounds.

David Rousell said the main idea behind the CubeWalk Soundtrail was to foster a sense of belonging and social inclusion amongst people from diverse cultural backgrounds.

“We wanted to capture some of the stories that make our regional university special, and let people experience those stories in the places where they were created,” David said.

A series of guided CubeWalk Soundtrail tours is scheduled during Get Connected Week, Monday 18 to Friday 22 July. Bring your smart phone or tablet and earphones.

Can’t get to the Lismore campus? Download the free Soundtrails mobile app from iTunes or Google Play and experience the CubeWalk Soundtrail for yourself.

Photo: Cloe Jager (left) and Jessica Neal, two of the Bachelor of Media students who produced the CubeWalk Soundtrail audio documentaries.