Postcode Stories is a location-based story challenge in which teams create their own guided tour to a neighborhood through stories plotted on a map. This guide enables facilitators to run their own Postcode Stories challenge through a step-by-step process including preparing theme, picture, and knowledge cards; having teams choose locations, develop stories, and record audio; and sharing the finished stories through online and offline channels. Further assistance is available from the Postcode Stories team.

1. What is Postcode
Stories?
..... Postcode Stories is a location-based story
challenge in which teams create their own
guided tour to a neighbourhood.
Run your own This guide enables facilitators to run their own
Postcode Stories challenge in an easy step-by-
Challenge step format, tailored to their setting.
The How-To pack also includes 1-Page Guides
to using each of the technical tools described
and templates for content.
Further assistance can be delivered by the
Postcode Stories team.
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2. How it works: In this kit you will
1. Teams find and create location-based stories
find:
(fictional or non-fictional) using a pack of cards
The step-by-step plan for facilitators, in this set
which helps them through the process of
of cards.
selecting locations, story themes and ideas.
Templates for creating the cards which help
2. They develop their ideas into a narrative
participants choose their story themes and ideas.
plotted onto a map, on which the stories unfold
from point to point.
Story creation guides and inspiration words to
help transform initial ideas into fully-fledged
3. They bring their stories to life through audio
narratives.
recording and imagery, using simple digital
tools.
1-page guides showing facilitators how to use all
of the digital tools suggested in this kit.
3. They share their stories and invite people to
experience them as an alternative audio guided
A template for creating printed maps.
walking tour. This can be in situ as an MP3 /
online audio, on a website using googlemaps, or
in a printed / drawn map tour guide
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3. Setting up your
challenge:
Decide when you will run the sessions: it could
be as part of a lesson, at a series of weekly /
monthly meetings, or an intensive one-day / two
day workshop...
Set a minimum of 1 hour to complete each of
the 5 chapters. The more time you have, the
richer the output.
Work out your team’s technical abilities and the
equipment available to you, so you can decide
whether to follow digital or non-digital steps.
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4. What you need: On your marks, get
The challenge is inexpensive to run, and if you set...
are part of an organisation / school you are
likely to be able to access everything needed Before you start make sure you have read
for free. If the cost is to be covered by your through all of the cards in this deck, and have
group it should only be around £10 to prepare checked out the 1-Page Guides to any digital
all the things needed for 20 participants. tools you plan to use.
The basic content includes printouts of maps, Depending on the number of participants we
printouts / digital prints of photos, and recommend no more than 6 per team so
printouts of the templates in this kit. everyone can be involved in the creative
process. You can have any number of teams.
If you are running a digital version of the
challenge this can also be achieved If you as facilitator are deciding on the teams
inexpensively using free software on internet- you may wish to ensure a mixture of
enabled phones. Other kit including extroverted and quieter people are
computers / cameras / tablets will be needed partnered, as each team will need at least
for a more advanced version, and if you want to one person who is happy to be vocal.
create a website for your challenge this may
have additional costs. For inspiration, listen to the stories on
postcodestories.co.uk and play them to your
group if you like.
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5. Checklist
In this preparatory chapter you will:
- Choose the geographical area your stories
will cover.
CHAPTER 1: - Take photos of local places - or get the teams
to take photos
- Plot the photo locations onto maps.
Preparation - Create your deck of cards for teams: Theme
Cards, Picture Cards and Knowledge Cards.
For this chapter you might need:
- 1-Page Guide to Twitpic
- 1-Page Guide to Flickr
8 - Cards templates 9

6. The local safari
Go out and take photos of local places for story
inspiration, using a camera or mobile phone.
Before you go, decide on the geographical area
your stories will cover. If you want the groups to
take the pictures themselves, which can enhance
the challenge, try choosing a smaller more
doable radius, or even limit yourself to one
street. If you are going to take the photos
yourself you may want to venture out wider. We
chose a 1km radius.
Pictures can be of anything that looks interesting
or might make a good story point - from an
abandoned building to a garden gnome.
As you take photos make sure you take a note
of their locations.You could take a photocopy of
an A-Z page and mark where things are, or if
you are using a smartphone you could use a geo-
tagging photo site like Twitpic which gives you
the option to include location data.
(see the 1-Page Guide to Twitpic) 10 11

7. Get historical Create your map
If you want to add a layer of local history to Once you have your photo-set, you need
your stories there are two simple ways to printed maps of the area which flag-up the
do this: locations of all your photos.
1 -Talk to the people you see as you go A very simple way is to enlarge a photocopy
around taking pictures. This could be the of the relevant page in an A-Z, then put
local librarian / shop owner / pub landlord , numbered stickers over the locations of the
anyone who has lived in the area for a while. pictures you have taken, making sure you give
You never know what true stories you might the location and the image the same number.
uncover! Covering the maps with sticky-back plastic
means groups can draw on them.
2 - Go online and use a search engine like
google to look for your area’s name or If your group is digitally literate you can use
postcode together with the words ‘history’ online geotagged maps.You could upload your
or social history, or look for anything in your pictures to Flickr and use the ‘Add this photo
area that might be protected by National to your map’ option. You can then print the
Trust / English Heritage. map page which automatically includes the
location points.
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8. Create your cards Picture cards
This challenge uses three types of cards: To create your PICTURE cards start by
THEME, PICTURE, and KNOWLEDGE. Each printing your location photos.
team in the group should be given their own
set of cards to work from. You could use simply a home printer, or a
developing service at a place like Snappy
To create your THEME cards think about Snaps, or an instant printing booth (try
what is relevant and interesting to larger Boots stores) where you attach your
participants. You could chose completely phone or camera for instant photo prints.
fanciful themes such as time travel or ghost
stories, or topical issues such as local life or On the back of your printed pictures make
families. We recommend at least 3-5 theme sure you write the location number as on
options. the maps.
Once confirmed, you can also find images
that explain the theme to use as the front of You can also write some story inspiration
the cards. on the back - look at the picture and think
On the back of the theme cards write the of the questions that might aid the creative
name of the theme - and add some thought thought process. These would generally
starters to help people. For example a ghost start with: why, what, where, how,
theme might say: ‘maybe they have who, when.
unfinished business...’.
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9. Did you know?
Any interesting local information you
discovered can be turned into
KNOWLEDGE CARDS. Put each piece of
information on its own card with the title
‘did you know’. If the content is relevant to a
particular photo or location you might also
want to number it accordingly on the map.
We suggest you print out all cards the same
size, although this is not necessary.
KNOWLEDGE and THEME cards can also be
printed out by photo developers should you
wish: simply save your file as a PDF and load
Asking Questions from a Location it onto a USB or a CD.
Photo, an example:
You can find a template for all cards in the
Why is the church boarded up? Templates download file.
What happened here?
Who built it and when?
What’s behind the gates?
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10. CHAPTER 2:
Structuring your
story
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11. Checklist Pick a card...
In this chapter teams will: At the start of this session all groups should
have a map in front of them.
Choose the theme for their stories
First up, give each team their THEME cards and
Choose their photos that make up the story give them around 5 minutes to choose a theme.
locations
With their chosen THEME card in front of
Plot their locations onto a map them, the groups should then receive the
PICTURE cards and the KNOWLEDGE cards.
Start to develop story ideas out of each picture
Within a chosen timeframe each team must
choose the pictures that they want to use for
For this chapter you might need: their tour. From the wider pool the team
should pick roughly one photo per person. You
The inspiration words may decide to use more or less, depending on
the time you have available for the whole
challenge.
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12. Starting the stories
With the theme decided and the picture cards
chosen the teams can start coming up with
their story ideas.
We recommend having paper / post-it notes
available and giving the teams at least half an
hour. During this they should:
- look in detail at each photo and develop
possibilities on what might have happened here
- look at where the pictures are on the map
- think about connections and similarities
between the pictures
- plot the order and route of their tour -
where does their story start and end?
To help get the creative juices flowing you can
print out the page of inspiration words
(found in the Templates download file)
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13. Checklist
In this chapter teams will:
CHAPTER 3: Develop their individual picture stories
Connect the stories together into an overall
tour that makes narrative sense
CREATING STORIES Test out their stories so far by reading them
to their team.
For this chapter you might need:
- Story creation template
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14. The story arc Get exciting
To help with this process you could get the
Once the teams have decided initial story ideas teams to think about the questions that the
and the order of their images, it is time to story is answering and what makes it exciting
develop a full story arc. as a tour for someone to follow:
This means developing the plot, looking at how
• What is hidden in the photo?
and where the ideas link, and fleshing out the • What happened and what journey did the
ideas into engaging stories. character/s go on to get there?
• How did this lead to what you see before
This is slightly different to traditional story you now?
development as these will make up a tour, so
the physical location is an important element. Each story point needs to be an episode in
The team needs to decide what the thread is the overall narrative, with its own beginning,
that links the locations together. Is it a middle and end.
character? A period in time? An occurrence?
To assist the teams you may want to give
Stories can be as short or long as the teams them one of the story creation templates
choose, and obviously the less time the included in the Templates download file.
challenge has to run, the less story These templates enable all the main points in
development will be possible. the story to be plotted down.
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15. Get feedback
Once the stories are more formed we CHAPTER 4:
suggest that a team member reads them out
to the team. This will help identify anything
they feel doesn’t make sense or they want
to change. Storytelling
Remember the final stories are a tour so
listening to them and understanding them is
important!
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16. Checklist Scripting
Once the teams have their ideas formed they
In this chapter teams will:
need to craft these into a script for the tour.
Put their stories into a script for recording
This includes thinking about how to introduce
each audio clip and its relevance to where the
Record their stories in audio
listener might be standing. For example you
might begin by saying: ‘In front of you you can
Research further images to enhance their
see .....’ or ‘You are standing at the exact spot
stories
where .....’
The teams should take some time to finalise
For this chapter you might need:
their scripts, adding or changing sections as
they read through them.
- 1-Page Guide to Flickr
When reading through the scripted story it is
- 1-Page Guide to Audio recording
also a good idea to think about how to bring
the story alive with your voice. Participants
- 1-Page Guide to YouTube
may want to mark the words they want to
emphasise / places to breathe. It is important
to think about how someone listening will
hear the story.
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17. Once the scripts are complete the stories are
ready to be recorded.
You can use a variety of free or cheap
applications for phones / laptops / portable
devices, which let you record directly onto the
device, and either upload live to the internet or
save the files onto the device itself. We
recommend trying Soundcloud or Audioboo.
Alternatively you can use a dictaphone, or even
create videos instead of audio and upload these
to YouTube.
Participants can either decide to each record a
section of the story, or one or two members
Create a script to tell the story of a may want to record it all.
Location, an example:
An extra stage in the storytelling challenge is
‘This may look like any abandoned church,’ but .... finding images online that help to bring the
stories to life. For this teams should be sure to
‘Standing in front of the boarded up church you use creative-commons images which can be
would never guess that...’ searched for easily using Flickr. (for how to do
this see the 1-Page Guide to Flickr)
‘This church was once....’ 32 33

18. CHAPTER 5:
SHARING YOUR
STORIES
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19. Checklist
In this chapter you or your team members will:
Upload the audio stories to a computer or the
Get uploading
internet and name them
Once all the stories are recorded and saved it
and optionally.... is time to upload the content. If you have been
using Audioboo or Soundcloud there will have
Plot them on a google map been an option to upload directly.
Share the stories through offline and/or online
channels When uploading be sure to give your
Create a physical print map recording a title so that it is easy to find again.
Enjoy their creations! For example give the story name and then a
reference to the chapter of the story. (see the
For this chapter you might need: 1-Page Guide to audio uploading)
- 1-Page Guide to Flickr If you recorded using software that doesn’t
automatically share content online, make sure it
- 1-Page Guide to audio uploading is all emailed to one place so it can then be
uploaded to the internet manually.
- 1-Page Guide to YouTube
- 1-Page Guide to Googlemaps
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- Printed map template

20. Get sharing More ways to share
Sharing doesn’t have to be digital.
To share this content you could:
You could also:
Download the audio from the website or
- Host a storytelling event and either play
Soundcloud (or similar) into an MP3 which
the content or read them live
you can play directly in iTunes or Quicktime.
- Run the stories as an event for a local
festival
Put all the stories onto a CD and give a copy
- Organise a walking tour to all the story
to participants.
locations
- Share the stories with your local radio
Put all the stories in a zipfolder (in the
station
correct story order) and upload them to your
website - or your organisation’s website.
You can also design your own printed tour
map for people to use. Head to the
Attach the MP3 files an email attachment and
Postcode Stories homepage where you can
send it to people.
download the map that we created for the
Kings Norton challenge, and see the map
Plot your audio into a googlemap (see how to
template in the Templates folder that you
do this on the 1-Page Guide to googlemaps).
use to make your own version.
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21. and now....
ENJOY YOUR
TOURS!
If you would like to reward your participants
for all their hard work you can find a special If you want to run a digital version of Postcode
Postcode Stories certificate template in the Stories but don’t have the technical skills, get in
Templates folder. touch and we can run a workshop to teach you
all you need to know.
We’d love to hear about your Postcode
Stories challenges - if you want to share them Be sure to check out the 1-Page Guides too,
or for us to upload them to the website let us these will show you how to use audio
know at hello@postcodestories.co.uk uploading tools, googlemaps, Twitter,YouTube,
and Flickr.
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