UC Quakebox deployed at Re:Start mall

Today marks an important milestone for the University of Canterbury's earthquake response, with UC Quakebox deployed at the Re: Start mall on Cashel Street, ready to begin recording Christchurch's earthquake stories from Saturday 21 April.

UC Quakebox is an innovative mobile recording studio. Located within a former Tourism New Zealand container, its first deployment in the Re:Start mall is very much in keeping with the start-up spirit in post-quake Christchurch.

Professor Jen Hay, Director of the New Zealand Institute of Language, Brain and Behaviour says that she is very excited about the launch of UC Quake Box. "The project has so much potential.  We hope to record a wide range of stories, capturing a rich audio-visual archive of Cantabrian's experiences of the earthquakes and recovery process. This archive will be invaluable for understanding people's experiences, as well as providing an excellent research tool for studying how people tell stories in general. We encourage everyone to come along and share their stories."

Liz Grant, Project Manager for UC Quakebox, noted that this is a way to give individual expression to a shared public disaster. "The earthquakes have been a major community catastrophe, but everyone will have experienced them in a unique way. We're really looking forward to hearing their stories.'

Quakebox  will be open at Re:Start 10-3pm, Tuesday-Sunday, until Saturday 19 May. Please, come down and tell your story!

Photographs by Liz Grant, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.