A City + A Garden: Stories and soundtracks combine for walks in Cork and Dublin

Mary Hickson explains the project that encourages people to don headphones and follow a story as they stroll special routes from such locations as the Shaky Bridge and Botanic Gardens 

A Garden and a City: Top, Danny Denton, Deirdre Breen and Mary Hickson; above, Tolu Makay, Lisa McInerney, Connor Lovett.

Like so many of us, Mary Hickson has been walking familiar streets in her city a lot more than usual. But Hickson, known for her work as director of biennial Cork festival Sounds From a Safe Harbour (SFSH), has been on a very specific mission: to augment our reality with the aid of technology, and to light up familiar city streets with a brief spark of magic.

“I’ve literally been walking and walking like a lunatic, seeing parts of Cork I’ve never seen before,” Hickson says with a smile. “I’ve just walked Louise’s story four times in a row, and I was sending notes to our musical director: shave ten seconds off chapter four.”