Cape Town start-up fuels Trevor Noah’s audio tours

A Cape Town-based start-up, VoiceMap, drives the technology behind the soon-to-be launched interactive self-guided walking tour launched by Trevor Noah’s satirical news TV programme The Daily Show. In the tour, the Johannesburg-born Noah will take people on a journey through the events of the United States Capital attack on 6 January 2021.

VoiceMap is the magic behind the “technological breakthrough” which is known as “In the footsteps of the freedomsurrection”, reports Variety. It will allow listeners to trace the exact route taken by the insurrectionists to revisit the events that occurred before, during and after the historic day in Washington D.C.

According to Variety, beginning near the White House, the tour promises to take guests down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol, following in the footsteps of the people who marched in support of keeping former President Donald Trump in office.

As a follow-up to its “Heroes of freedomsurrection” installation – The Daily Show’s collection of monuments paying “tribute” to the “heroes” most responsible for inciting the Capitol riots – the new excursion will use VoiceMap’s technology to recapture the history of the insurrection for Washington, D.C. visitors.

“In the footsteps of the freedomsurrection” features 15 stops that spotlight important sites.

VoiceMap was founded by former travel journalist Iaian Manley who, according to an Outlook report, has since given voice to the people who have a far deeper connection to a place than a traditional tour company.

Simply put, VoiceMap is a publishing platform and marketplace for location-aware audio tours. It doesn’t have the traditional focus on distributing key (but dry) information about particular destinations but instead focuses on giving people a platform to share stories by letting them design and record their own audio tours.

VoiceMap allows users to create tours that aren’t pinned to traditional sightseeing destinations but rather spots they have a personal affinity to. Since its launch in October 2014, VoiceMap’s library of audio tours has been crafted by everyone from celebrities, journalists, novelists and tour guides to simply passionate locals.

“Location-aware audio is not something people are very familiar with so asking them to create a great audio tour without having been on one is a bit like asking someone to create a great film without ever having gone to the movies,” explains in an earlier interview Manley.

“We help them through the process of creating a tour – we divide it up into steps so we can map it out. They write up a script, which gets sent to our editors. Our focus isn’t really on changing the style of content but making sure that the logistics are going to work, that the directions are clear etc.”

ALSO READ: Kwik launches one-hour delivery in Ibadan