Penguin Launches Interactive Phone Booth

When was the last time you had a conversation in a phone booth? When was the last time you spoke to your favourite author in a phone booth?

Dial-a-Story is a collaboration between Sandpit and Penguin Books Australia. The project sees authors and readers sharing stories in specially crafted Penguin Phone Booths located in book-lovers’ haunts across Australia. Participants can dial one of five authors –TV personality John Safran, celebrity gardener Jamie Durie, children’s book author Graeme Base, celebrity chef Maggie Beer or radio personality Father Bob Maguire –and hear a never-before-heard personal story from the author’s own life. The authors then invite you to leave your own message. Once you have shared your story and hung up, the phone booth prints a unique ticket with an ID and URL.

When accessing the URL you can hear your story back, share it on Facebook or Twitter and hear other readers’ stories. By sharing a story from your own life, you join an ever-growing online archive of wonderful Australian stories.

Readers are already hearing and sharing their tales in the new Library at the Dock in Melbourne’s Docklands. Next, Dial-a-story will move to the New City Library in Adelaide. The project will continue on a tour across Australia.

More information on the project is available here.

Listen to stories already on the archive here.

Sandpit creates immersive, personal experiences that change people. We place audiences right at the centre of interactive experiences that connect physical things to the digital world.

Sandpit was founded in 2012 and is a collaboration between Creative Directors Sam Haren and Daniel Koerner, who between them have diverse experience in creating live events, screen media, digital content and developing new technologies.

Sandpit has designed multiplatform extensions for feature films 52 Tuesdays, The Boy Castaways, a campaign for Hopscotch’s release of feature film Now You See Me, and has directed an interactive audio tour experience I, Animal for Melbourne Zoo. Sandpit recently created a participatory storytelling experience for the Australian Children’s Television Foundation, and Windmill Theatre on their forthcoming performance, and feature film, Girl Asleep.

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