The research stay Loqui Walls. The walls speak. Podcast to give voice to the territory has proposed the creation of a communication project of the Mudejar territory through a series of thematic podcasts that promote, encourage and complement the visit to the territory.

The starting hypothesis was that the combination of the unstoppable and undeniable use of mobile technologies with the current health situation meant that some localities needed to be reoriented towards a more autonomous and spaced tourism, both in terms of physical distance and time, so a priori this methodology seemed to be the right one to be able to provide service to travellers at any time of the day and, above all, any day of the week.

These podcasts are in no way intended to replace the experience of a guided tour in situ by a specialist, but given that these are generally limited to the main monuments, they are intended to complement and enrich both the prior preparation and the subsequent experience, proposing a series of routes through the territory and additional information about the localities and the possible activities to be carried out in them or in other nearby places.

To this end, a first phase of research was carried out in collaboration with the internship students of the Desafío Programme, in which four possible thematic axes were identified for structuring the first podcasts, which also served as a pilot for the project.

1. The birth of Mudejar
2. The keys to the Mudejar style
3. Mixed race and border
4. World Heritage

The idea has been to develop the podcast channel under these three objectives:

• As an enhancer of “derived” visits. That is to say, that through this medium, localities that receive fewer visitors can acquire greater visibility by offering themselves as a complement to visits to other towns that today have a more developed tourist infrastructure.
• As a complement to other visits already underway within the same locality and whose effectiveness has been proven. To be able to work along the lines of complementarity within the same locality and increase the number of places visited and the time spent in the localities.
• Proposing routes between nearby locations, thus creating a network between places with similar communication needs that can benefit synergistically.

In the testing and corrections phase during its implementation, an active collaboration of the inhabitants of the territory was foreseen, but the current health situation has led to transfer part of this work to online formats, with some activities pending that will be carried out as soon as the situation allows.

The fundamental objective has been that this research work and its subsequent implementation, available both through the Territorio Mudéjar website and through different commercial channels, should serve not only to activate this specific initiative, but also to create guidelines that, based on the previous research, the pilot implementation and its start-up, testing, corrections, etc. (which are a fundamental phase of this stay), constitute a reference both in terms of content and at a technical level that can be used in the rest of the towns and villages in the territory. The objective is to promote this communication system which, at the moment, seems to be a possible way of developing sustainable tourism with possibilities for the future.

In this sense, a technical guide has been produced that explains how to convert audio files, how to add metadata to podcasts to facilitate their location in different repositories, how to analyse the commercial platforms available on the market, and how to create guidelines for text style, length and content architecture, to allow for proper voiceover, dissemination and understanding of the content.

RESEARCH LINE: Corresponds to the lines of cultural heritage management and communication and dissemination.

THE AUTHORS:

• Gianluca Vita, Politecnico di Milano.
• Irene Ruiz, Politecnico di Torino and University of Zaragoza.
• Marco Marcellini, expert in new technologies.