Content and Production Design

One challenge familiar to all members of the You Are Here project team was generating interaction. As storytellers and artists, we all knew that simply putting the You Are Here device into the wild and hoping that passersby would decide to share their stories was unlikely. To bridge that gap, we wanted to make sure that anyone who joined the You Are Here network and made it to the homepage found relevant, engaging stories about the nearby landmarks that would, hopefully, inspire audience members to also share their own.

We therefore chose the two You Are Here station sites that would help maximize both accessibility and audience engagement; for this, we looked for hosts near highly trafficked public parks. Based on our own experiences, Tompkins Square Park in the East Village and the High Line in Chelsea were excellent candidates, offering both high levels of foot traffic and accessible host sites. At the same time, the unique character of the two locations also allowed us to experiment with distinct styles of narrative and engagement.

“We had opportunities to do two different approaches,” says Benjamen Walker, who coordinated and produced the audio stories that launched with the You Are Here nodes. These stories—each of which was intimately tied to its physical location—were designed specifically to help frame and inspire audience contributions, and to seed conversations about the spaces.