Experiencing George Town often feels like travelling back in time. The streets are lined with historic houses of worship, colonial structures, and waterfront settlements, reminding us of the migration stories that shaped Penang. While common tourism narratives about George Town often focus on its past, we were interested in the lived experiences, learning from the very people who are sustaining the ever-evolving landscape of the inner city.

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We wanted to create AR experiences in collaboration with significant sites across George Town that are ethical and sustainable yet attractive to young audiences. The term “sense of ownership” was brought up frequently at the start of the project, and we have deeply considered community involvement and begun implementing such values within Ceritalah processes. 

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Ceritalah consists of several experiences that took different approaches in getting the community involved. What is internally referred to as “community consultation” could range from interviewing several storytellers to inform a script, to encouraging artists to engage with communities, to even holding direct interviews with site custodians (people behind the place). In attempting to find ways to encourage a sense of ownership within communities that we work with, the team had to strongly consider:

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• Whose voice is heard?
• Who has influence in the decisions?
• Who is affected by the process and outcomes?

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Whose voice is heard?

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When addressing this question, we first ask ourselves: whose voices want to be heard? In acknowledging that the project would potentially provide visibility for the community, the team would first need to know who wanted to participate. Any resistance from the community at this stage was to be respected, and in some cases, they were with two places deciding to not participate in the project. Despite not wanting to be involved, the opportunity to engage with such communities gave the team insight on existing issues and concerns of residents within the inner city in regards to tourism and narratives presented about them. If anything, such insight influenced the layers of community consultation that involve risk assessments before and after project implementation to ensure that the project does more good than harm. 

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In the case of developing Ceritalah’s Heritage Trails that include augmented reality (AR) Memory Boxes at heritage sites with short audio stories told by site custodians, it was always clear the voices telling the stories needed to be representatives of each place -  meaning generational business owners, temple committee members, local tour guides and authors. In conversation with Sofea Lee, lead community consultant for the Heritage Trails, she shares insight on the lengths to which she went to establish relationships with various custodians. This meant regular visits, supporting the businesses, making herself seen and known to various staff and community members, and finding the right time to discuss the project with the custodians. In initial meetings, she would try to identify what the storytellers were most passionate about just from informal conversations. Early exchanges often influenced the guided questions prepared for interviews with them that happened upon the second or third visit. She emphasises the need for interpersonal skills, sensitivity and care in engaging the site custodians, which contributed to a process of trust building with the representatives, staff and other members. 

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Who has the influence in the decisions?

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The community consultation process can be broken down to several stages: 

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1. Exploring interest - Do they want to be a part of the project?
2. Learning their story - What story do they want to tell, and in what language(s)?
3. Interviewing custodians
4. Presenting the AR experience with audio narration cut down to 2-3 minutes for approval 
5. Risk assessment - Understanding how the implementation of the project has impacted their site

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These stages are carefully curated to provide multiple opportunities for the custodians to provide input, which can lead or influence the direction of the project. It is also an approach that has strongly considered the resources available to the team on how to co-create with the community while maintaining a certain level of curation for quality output. In these various stages, custodians share insight on sensitives to avoid, stories often gone untold, and even preferences of names for places that are misrepresented in mainstream media. By respecting the custodians’ own agency to influence decision making, we acknowledge that our storytellers are not only the best candidates to tell their own stories, but also experienced individuals in tourism who know their visitors well. 

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Who is affected by the process and outcome?

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Sofea shares, “It’s very humbling—I feel like they’re doing us, our project and the larger community who will experience these stories a huge favour by agreeing to be featured, by spending time with me and letting me document their stories.” At the same time, she felt that the custodians felt the opposite in feeling that it was a huge favour to them to be able to have their stories featured. 

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Some of the custodians felt the agency to lead the narratives of certain topics to their visitors and the platform enables them to engage without requiring extensive resources from the sites themselves. From the production team's point of view, there is a desire to create a better understanding of the sites around town beyond its aesthetic value. Collectively, we hope that visitors are positively impacted by the stories shared, and a level of respect is cultivated towards the people behind each place. 

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While the Ceritalah team carries the responsibility to monitor the implementation of the project, we continue to ask the question of what it means to sustain relationships with the site custodians. A question to be further explored based on the effects of the outcome and the impact from the launch of the project. At the same time, we are grateful for this opportunity to attempt to take a step in the right direction of exploring what it means for custodians to have a sense of ownership towards the spaces that they share and the narratives that they carry. 

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Definitions:

Sense of ownership

A concept through which to assess whose voice is heard, who has influence over decisions, and who is affected by the process and outcome (Lachapelle, 2008, p. 52)

Definition from Paul Lachapelle (2008) A Sense of Ownership in Community Development: Understanding the Potential for Participation in Community Planning Efforts, p. 52. 

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Community

A community is a group with shared characteristics such as geography, time (past, current and future), attitude, culture, identity or interests. However, a community is not an homogenous group; people will likely belong to more than one identifying community. Communities may not be static and have different meanings to different people, and engaging with a community requires acknowledging and respecting this diversity.

Definition from Engagement Overlay to the RIBA Plan of Work

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Custodian

A term commonly used to describe an employee or other person or group with ownership, custody, or control over potentially relevant information.

Definition from Christopher Boehning and Daniel J. Toal (2018) Issuing Guidance on ESI Custodians, Court Defers to Responding Party

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