VoiceMap

With spring officially in the air, Cape Town is slowly emerging from its damp winter cocoon, awaiting the annual summer influx of tourists, eager to experience the diverse delights and sights of the Mother City and surrounds. For the founders of VoiceMap – a pioneering company on the cusp of launching their innovative location-aware audio walks in Cape Town – it’s an exciting time. Iain Manley met business partner Lauren Edwards last year, while creating new content for the operators of Cape Town’s familiar open-top tour-bus. “Open-top buses worldwide use location-aware systems that play commentary at specific GPS locations,” says Manley. “But most tell a city's story with only one or two voices, which doesn’t allow for diversity or individual perspectives. Attempting to relate the story of the Bo-Kaap in the same way as that of the colonial Company Gardens, or the Grand Parade – where Mandela addressed 200,000 ecstatic people after his release from prison – was an immensely frustrating task. We struggled to capture emotion, without the personal opinions, anecdotes and sense of ownership reflected in the words, ‘I love’, ‘I remember’, and ‘I hope’.” “My best travel experiences have been when a local shows me their city,” he continues. “It immediately cuts through all the abstraction of being an outsider, making you a participant, with a point of reference that helps you identify with a place. You get to share somebody else's feelings for their home – and that’s exactly what VoiceMap aims to do.” VoiceMap is a user-friendly mobile app as well as a unique, freely accessible online tool that allows storytellers to plan, narrate and publish routes of their own. The storytellers set the price, and earn half the proceeds. Using the VoiceMap mobile app, you can find the walks closest to you, or browse through them by author. After purchasing a route for a nominal fee, the maps and audio can be downloaded and enjoyed offline, in the company of an informative, …

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