Derek Thomas • Niall McNulty • Leon Conradie • Durban School of Comedy (Glenn Bo & Dusty Rich) • Durban Is Yours (Russell Grant & Bob Perfect) • Matt Kay • Iain “ Ewok ” Robertson • Blue Wilderness (Mark Addison & Ella Addison) • Archie Msomi & Cebo Zulu • Grant Prestedge • Quarter Bunny (Luke Comins & Chris Shappe)
My mom actually sent me this link and it is such an excellent idea that I thought I should share it.
Created to deliver on-demand programming that classrooms or communities can replay continually, the Lifeplayer is an oversized MP3 player that can be pre-loaded to hold 64GB of educational content, can download Internet audio and can record live voice or radio programmes for playback later. With a wireless solar panel and a hand-wound crank, the Lifeplayer can even charge mobile phones. Which means it allows rural communities to cross the digital divide and access vital information.
Buried down at the bottom of the article is a one-liner, which states “even oral histories that are in danger of being lost can be recorded onto the Lifeplayer and saved for future generations.” This is where the potential for its integration into a larger digital heritage project lies. Indigenous knowledge, local histories or folklore and community interviews could be loaded onto the Lifeplayer and listeners encouraged to interact with this content and record their own content. This user-generated content could be uploaded to a central database through the cellular networks and distributed to other communities or made available online.
Last Sunday we took a tour of the Marianhill Monastery in Durban. The area has a fascinating history, tied in to the Trappist Monks and their missionary work as well as being responsible for educating a number of liberation leaders. Of interest to us was the grave of Benedict Vilakazi, who is one of the featured writers on the North Coast Writers Trail we are currently researching. Vilakazi was an educator and author who was born in Groutville but educated at Marianhill, where he also later taught. Full profile can be read here.
Late last year we took part in the e-Learning Festival at the Durban University of Technology, presenting a session on our work with the KZN Literary Tourism project.
The KZN Literary Tourism research project is now in its ninth year of operation. Literary Tourism is tourism that deals with places and events from fictional texts as well as the lives of their authors. This could include following the route a fictional character charts in a novel, visiting particular settings from a story or tracking down the haunts of a novelist.
Literary tourists are specifically interested in how places have influenced writing and at the same time how writing has created place. In order to become a literary tourist you need little more than your favourite novel and an adventurous spirit. However there are literary guides, literary maps and literary tours to help you on your way.
The project runs an active website where it hosts a number of resources for research. These include a database of author profiles, literary videos, audio clips of writers reading their work, and digital versions of the literary trails produced by the project. All research produced by the project is also available through the research section of the website. This presentation will look at the KZN Literary Tourism project and the e-resources it has produced over the past few years.
