Back to index of Nerve 10 - Spring 2007

Speke Hall Podcast

The Speke Hall podcasted audio guide has been an unusual collaboration between the National Trust staff at Speke’s famous Tudor Hall and a group of teenagers from Interchill, a young peoples’ internet drop-in centre in Garston.

The group from Interchill were set the task of creating a podcast tour of the hall that would interest and engage other young people. To do this they have spent the last four months visiting the hall and talking to the staff about its history and the often gruesome stories that have surrounded it. They then filtered out all the stuff they were less interested in, and put their energy into retelling the stories that caught their imagination in a way that would appeal to other young people.

Jesse Monaghan, the national trust learning and interpretation officer at Speke Hall, told us that,
“It’s all part of our ongoing commitment to engage with local communities. We really wanted to use this project as a chance to find out what the young people found interesting about the hall.”

The group of young people, working alongside youthworkers and community artist Nick Birkenshaw, wrote and recorded an alternative mp3 podcast guide to the hall, which represents their unique scouse, teenage, perspective on its history. They have also designed a colourful interactive map to accompany the audio guide.

Callum Doctor, one of the young people involved in the project, described it as “fun learning.”

He said “I would recommend the podcast guide to other young people because you get to find out stuff and it’s fun.”

When asked what his favourite room was in the hall he said “it was the tapestry room, because of the ‘so-called’ ghost story,” emphasizing the ‘so called’ with the cynical tone of someone who has learnt to separate the facts from the myths, and then decided that the myths are more fun.

The podcast and map are available to download from...www.interchill.co.uk

Go to 2007 in the calendar selector, click on the 2007 programme, and then the Speke Hall Podcast project. Here you will find the podcast to download, audio clips to listen to, photos taken by the group, an interactive map, and a map to download and print.

There is also an article featuring the project on the official National Trust website.

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Sorry Comments Closed

Comment left by Fran Derby on 11th June, 2008 at 22:44
Looking forward to hearing the podcast.

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