Nurturing people's sense of place: immersive technologies as “affective mediators” for relatable, diverse, and positive local stories

Stories can influence people's sense of place and when local narratives are not shaped by local communities, this can result in stigmatisation and alienation. There is little research on the role of immersive storytelling as a community place-making tool, so this paper interrogates how immersive technologies can be harnessed to challenge dominant place-related narratives and nurture people's sense of place. We implemented a survey at an immersive storytelling event, The StoryTrails Experience, across 15 UK cities. Each location featured a unique film shown on a cycloramic screen, which showed an animated reimagination of a city. Those films comprised of 3D scans of people, places, and objects central to their audio stories, all of which were collected by local creatives (“story mappers”). Local event audiences with an existing connection to a city ( n = 67; ages 7–86) completed a survey measuring sense of place on a city and national level – reported before (retrospectively) and after watching the cycloramic film – alongside variables measuring emotional engagement (i.e., enjoyment, awe, presence, and perceived closeness to others). We also measured storytelling elements (recognition of own or others’ stories, story relatability, positive city portrayal, encountering new perspectives), contextual factors (event company and technical difficulties) and demographics. Overall pre–post changes in sense of place were not significant; however, enjoyment and awe were associated with positive change in both city and UK sense of place, and perceived closeness to others was associated with sense of place increase on the UK level. Sense of presence did not interact with any of the sense of place variables. Further, storytelling elements correlated with enjoyment, awe, and closeness. Enjoyment was predicted by story relatability and positive portrayal of place; awe by positive city representation and encountering new perspectives; and closeness by story relatability. This suggests that the place-making potential of immersive community storytelling lies primarily in sharing relatable, diverse and positive stories. We draw on Henri Lefebvre's conception of space to discuss the role of immersive technologies as an affective mediator for stories and a medium of positive disruption, rather than direct, causal agent of change.