Page 187 - ASMF Marriner 100 Coverage Book

Having been designed in collaboration with people experiencing
homelessness, alongside members of the academy at St. Martin in the
Fields and the Royal Academy of Music, the map takes in several key areas
for the homeless in the Charing Cross area. At each new location, a track is
triggered which prompts the listener to view their surroundings from a
different perspective. As the walk winds on, these nudges become more
explicit, focusing on the hidden lives of the people and places around you.

Initially, the soundwalk is easy to set up, downloading the free Echoes app
uses your phone’s GPS to cue in the music when you reach the
appropriate location. I found this quite unreliable, however, and resorted to
looking at the map and manually selecting which track to play – an
experience made harder by one track being out of place on the playlist
(the fourth track hides at the end).

Even with this immersion broken, however, the musical backing affects
the ‘feel’ of the walk more than I was expecting. Walking down Henrietta
Street to a rousing score felt like it was ripped straight from cinema, even if
it was disrupted by a pedicab rider blaring out Britney Spears not 30
seconds later! The walk returning to St. Martin in the Fields swells with a
wonderful hopefulness that rounds out the narrative to a nice conclusion.

Many of the spoken sections focus on imagining the stories of the
buildings and people around you, but this seems to fight against, rather
than embellish, A City Full of Stories’ engagement with the homeless
experience. This second theme is the more compelling, and it’s nice to
have locations I predominantly associate with food drops and rough-
sleeping recontextualised, but it would have been more effective to dwell
on these ideas for the full walk rather than pivoting to consider “hidden
lives” every few tracks.

Overall, if either the “sound” or the “walk” element of A City Full of
Stories appeals to you, then combining them for a “soundwalk” does make
them feel more special. The result is a pleasant way to kill half an hour in
the West End, if nothing else.

A City Full of Stories is free to complete, via the Echoes App, and more
details can be found here. NOTE: Completing the walk before 5:30pm
gives a more scenic walk through St Paul’s Churchyard.