Entrepreneur

Sarah Cole, TIME/IMAGE Online

Academic Partner

Stella Wisdom, The British Library

Project Title

Poetic London

Project Description

Bringing literature into everyday life the Poetic London residency paired Sarah Cole of TIME/IMAGE Online with Stella Wisdom from The British Library in order to create a mobile phone app mapping poetry and archival material onto London. The result is now available to download for free on both iOS and Android devices, created on the GoodBarber app building platform.

Users can experience poetic locations around London in one of two ways. By activation a GPS trigger, by walking near a marked location and thus being notified by the app, or alternatively explore London on their phone using a digital map of the city. Either way they have the opportunity to connect literary content, cultural heritage and real world locations. For example at the British Museum a poem by Thomas Hardy is combined with an engraving by Johann Joseph Friedric Otto Zardetti and historic information about the museum.

A half-day app launch was hosted at the British Library on the 18th of March 2016. In addition to Sarah Cole presenting Poetic London there were talks by Jocelyn Dodd developer of the Talking Statues app, Andy Ryan from the literary festival CityRead London, Dr Giasemi Vavoula of the Affective Digital Histories app, Maya Chowdhry of Tales from Towpath and Dr David Cooper of Manchester Metropolitan University.

Potential options for expansion and development of the Poetic London app have taken place, and Cole and Wisdom are approaching The National Academies and Creatives Exchange for future funding.