Back in 2012 UC researchers invited members of the public to share their stories of the Canterbury earthquakes. These stories were recorded in the UC QuakeBox, a mobile recording studio which was stationed at various locations throughout Ōtautahi Christchurch including Brooklands, Linwood, Sumner, Lyttelton, New Brighton, Riccarton and Central City. More than 700 people contributed to the project over the course of eight months, resulting in hundreds of hours of footage documenting the many different experiences of the disaster. These stories were archived in the UC QuakeStudies repository and are being used for linguistic research at the New Zealand Institute of Language, Brain and Behaviour (NZILBB).
Funded by the Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Fund, UC QuakeBox: Take 2 is revisiting these stories and the people who shared them. In 2019-2021 we offered the chance for original QuakeBox contributors to tell their story again and update us on what has happened since. The aim of the this follow-up study is to develop a significant longitudinal dataset of post-disaster stories, one that we hope will help inform research into the various impacts of disaster on social, physical, mental and cultural wellbeing over time.
The collecting phase of the QuakeBox: Take 2 project has now ended, and we have moved on to the analysis phase. You can watch and read participants’ stories here.