Participant content
The participants were invited to choose their preferred media output. As this project was a pilot concept, the UTL team hoped to provide a space for freedom, few requirements, and creativity.
One of the start-off points was a series of quotes that encapsulated their understanding of public transport before the start of the programme. Once the initial meetings had taken place and the public transport passes had been distributed we asked them to create at least one output per week which was then shared with our partners and posted on their local social media accounts.
Photography
Most of our participants enjoyed taking photos, either with their mobile phones or with professional cameras. This allowed them to capture a range of moments that reflected their experiences and views while commuting within the city.
Some of the content could reflect moments of everyday life that occur around public transport facilities, others looked into behaviors or the companions that appeared on vehicles, while others could reflect the wide range of views of the city and the surrounding landscape while being on the move.
A testimony to how public transport can be much more than just moving from A to B.
Mobility stories
Writing stories about commuting or personal reflections on the importance of public transport in the participants’ everyday lives became one of the main content outputs. The way they perceived the city’s transport network given their own previous personal experiences and comparing public transport in Warsaw with other cities they had lived in before, seemed to generate higher appreciation public transport.
Stories are powerful in many ways.
A story can allow the author the space and time to reflect on his lived experience while at the same time, written pieces can help reach audiences that images and videos do not. They support a personal construction of opinion and the programme allowed that to be shared and read by other users.
Videos
Thanks to mobile phones and the possibilities of easily accessible graphic design, video production has been a constant part of the content we received from our participants.