Tupapa is an app-based walking trail through the town of Gisborne, New Zealand that tells the story of indigenous Maori who arrived here by voyaging canoes over 800 years ago. It combines mobile, video, graphic novels, signage, sculpture, web and print.
Tupapa Webby Award Entry
URLs
The app features over one hundred bilingual stories told by four local tribes at eleven locations along the riverbanks and hills of the town. Each story location is marked with a sculptural sign, and at each of these locations the user can access multiple local perspectives on topics such as navigation, food, spiritual guardians, ancestors and more. Interactive graphic novels show some of the key ancestral stories of the tribes.
The trail is marked by two large trailhead maps, one is a map of the township and provides an overview of the walking trail; the other is a 4 metre sculptural map of the Pacific Ocean showing the journey that the original voyagers took to discover New Zealand. At this map the user can access stories of contemporary sailors who traverse the same path in traditional canoes.
The website is designed for those planning to visit the town and delivers interactive map-based content of the land and seascapes using interviews with the local storytellers. A ‘Build-a -Waka’ game with embedded documentary footage shows how the early settlers constructed and sailed canoes that traversed the Pacific.
A map-based brochure is used as a guide and to market the trail.
