Belfast Stories is a thrilling project to be part of as a team based here in the city. It can’t be simply described as a museum or gallery, nor a simple tourist attraction.
It’s a living, breathing engine for the city’s stories – an open invitation for everyone to contribute, connect, and be surprised by the richness of Belfast’s collective voice.
The challenge? How do you build a platform that can capture the wild, messy, beautiful diversity of a city’s lived experience – without boxing it in, flattening it, or losing the spark that makes each story unique?
This is where software, data, and creative AI are the only way forward.
Belfast Stories set out to solve a problem that’s as old as storytelling itself: how do you gather, share, and celebrate stories at scale, while keeping them personal, authentic, and alive?
The city’s ambition is bold. Stories aren’t to be sorted into neat categories or reduced to soundbites. They’re to be encountered as living things – messy, contradictory, joyful, heart-breaking, and true.
This ambition creates a technical challenge. Traditional databases and content management systems are built for structure and order.
Belfast Stories needed a “Story Engine” that could thrive on chaos – one that could connect a whispered childhood memory to a political rally, a kitchen-table anecdote to a citywide celebration, and let people explore these connections in ways that are as unpredictable as life itself.
At the heart of the Belfast Stories Generator is a simple but powerful principle: interoperability first.
This isn’t just a technical preference, it’s the foundation that allows us to capture, process, and present stories in ways that are as diverse and imaginative as Belfast itself.
Three core aspects build our solution:
• Input (Story capture)
• Processing & Analysis (Storage and curation)
• Output (Presentation)
Every story begins with an input – a way for someone to share their experience.
For us, input isn’t just a technical term; it’s the gateway to participation, and it’s where the heart of Belfast Stories truly starts to beat.
Our flagship example is the Story Dreamer: an AI-powered holographic interviewer designed for deep, meaningful engagement.
It invites participants to open up, reflect, and share their stories in a way that feels natural, safe, and even a little magical. The depth of connection and the quality of stories captured through the Story Dreamer set a new standard for interactive storytelling.
Interoperability is at the core of our approach, so we’re building a platform that welcomes every voice, no matter the channel.
We’re developing mobile apps and web portals to maximise reach – making it easy for anyone, anywhere in Belfast or beyond, to contribute their story with just a few taps.
For those who might not have access to digital devices, or who simply prefer a more familiar method, we’re enabling story sharing over the phone. Ensuring that even the quietest or most isolated voices can be heard.
This flexibility isn’t just a feature; it’s a fundamental part of our mission. By supporting a diverse range of input channels, we’re able to reach into every corner of the community and capture the lesser known, often underrepresented stories that make Belfast what it is.
Interoperability empowers us to meet people where they are – and to ensure that every story, no matter how it’s told, has a place in the city’s living archive.
Once stories are captured, they need to be stored, organized, and made meaningful. This is where Story Engine, comes in.
Story Engine sits at the core of the Belfast Stories Generator, acting as the intelligent hub that ingests, processes, and curates all incoming stories.
Whether you want to browse by time, place, emotion, or something entirely unexpected, the system is ready to flex and grow.
Its design is fundamentally flexible and extendable, allowing us to handle unstructured data, analyze content for themes and connections, and ensure that stories remain authentic and accessible.
Story Engine’s interoperability-first architecture means it can connect with any input or output, making it the backbone of a truly open storytelling ecosystem.
A key strength of Story Engine is its ability to integrate seamlessly with external content archives.
We have already demonstrated this capability with the Digital Film Archive, enabling our platform to find and surface film assets relevant to curated searches alongside personal stories. This integration enriches the storytelling experience by connecting narratives with historical and cultural media.
Looking ahead, we plan to expand support for additional video content archive partners this year, further broadening the range of multimedia resources available to users. This ongoing development ensures that Story Engine remains a dynamic and evolving platform, capable of incorporating diverse content types and sources to deepen engagement and discovery.
The final aspect is output – how stories are shared, discovered, and experienced by others.
Our platform, supports a wide array of outputs: immersive holographic displays, searchable digital archives, curated playlists, interactive exhibits, and more.
Whether it’s a permanent installation in a museum, a pop-up at a community event, or a personalized experience on a mobile device, Story Engine’s flexible APIs make it possible to present stories in any format. This ensures that every story, no matter how it was captured, can find its audience in the most engaging and meaningful way.
While we haven’t focused strategically on output presentation in Phase 2, this is an area we’re genuinely excited about and hope to showcase early next year.
We’ll be inviting people to take part in user testing towards the end of this year to help shape and refine these new presentation experiences. Watch this space for updates – if you’re interested in being among the first to experience and help shape the future of Belfast Stories, we’d love to hear from you!
By structuring the Belfast Stories Generator around three core aspects—input, processing, and output—and by putting interoperability at the centre, we’ve created a platform that is open, adaptable, and future-proof.
This approach isn’t just about technical flexibility; it’s about ensuring that every voice in Belfast, no matter how it’s shared or where it comes from, can find its place in the city’s living story.
The Story Dreamer is just one example of what’s possible when you enable new forms of input, offering deep, personal engagement. But our mission goes further.
Our platform is designed to welcome stories through any channel, from mobile apps and web portals to phone calls and beyond. This flexibility is what allows us to reach into every corner of the community, capturing the full diversity of Belfast’s experiences and perspectives.
Story Engine, ensures that no matter how stories are captured or how people want to experience them, the system can evolve and grow.
For curators and creators, this means having the ability to surface the most engaging and powerful stories – those that truly resonate and inspire – amidst a vast and ever-expanding archive.
Our technology quietly does the heavy lifting, making it easier to discover and share the moments that matter most.
This was the key to being able to deliver so much in Phase 2 of Augment the City: by building a foundation that welcomes new ideas, adapts rapidly to feedback, and – most importantly – supports the never-ending, ever-changing, and wonderfully diverse story of Belfast.
This work was only possible through deep collaboration. Hamilton Robson led the technical build, drawing on our experience with business applications, AI, and managing data at scale. Nerve Centre brought unparalleled expertise in community outreach and public engagement, ensuring the technology was rooted in real Belfast voices. 1UP Studios shaped the creative and experiential design, making the interface intuitive, accessible, and engaging.
Each partner played to their strengths, and the result is a system that’s as much about people as it is about code.
The feedback has been remarkable:
“It’s interesting, I’ve not seen anything like that before—a lovely experience.”
“The AI interviewer was strangely comforting and odd at the same time… like being interviewed by a real journalist.”
People found themselves reflecting in new ways, feeling heard and not judged. Some even described the experience as therapeutic.
Just as software has transformed retail, logistics, and entertainment, it’s now reshaping how cities remember, connect, and imagine themselves – because when technology truly works, it becomes invisible, quietly enabling trust and connection.
The key is building systems that not only deliver results, but respect and earn trust of AI tools through human oversight, transparent governance, and the ability to visualize and strengthen that trust as it grows. With every iteration, the reliability of innovative digital tools improves, bringing us ever closer to a future where technology empowers communities without ever overshadowing the stories at their heart.
The Belfast Stories Generator is not just a technical achievement – it’s a new kind of civic infrastructure, one that is open, flexible, and endlessly evolving.
As Belfast Stories moves forward, the story engine will continue to grow, gathering voices from every corner of the city and beyond. It’s proof that when software meets storytelling, the result isn’t just data – it’s meaning, connection, and a never-ending invitation to be part of something bigger.
Read more from our partners at Nerve Centre and 1UP Studios to see how community, creativity, and technology are coming together to power Belfast’s next chapter.
Get in touch if you’re interested in working with us or want to bring this kind of creative technology to your own community!
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