Our Stories App

We partnered with POTIONS & PIXELS to run a free summer camp for students in the North and West Ends for two summers. These camps for funded by the City of Charlotte and others in order to develop better ways of community engagement with youth. Through our work in those camps, we then developed the Our Stories CLT mobile app.

The concept for the app was the brainchild of the students actually visiting the historic cemetery and learning that most the people buried on the Black either had unmarked graves or were in mass graves. The goal of the app was to bring honor and acknowledgement to all those buried there.

Our Stories CLT is an augmented reality (AR) mobile game where YOU become a historical detective. Explore on foot and uncover hidden documents which will help you solve the mysteries behind one of Charlotte’s oldest and largest public cemeteries.

The once-segregated Historic Elwood and Pinewood Cemeteries are the resting places of people who shaped Charlotte’s history. Discover their often-overlooked stories through immersive AR. POTIONS & PIXELS created the app in partnership with Gökotta, City of Charlotte, Knight Foundation, & Google Fiber, and in direct collaboration with North End and West End students. Over the course of two years, the students learned about AR, helped design the game, and provided historic research.