17 Nov 2018

Building empathy: A Mile In My Shoes

From The Podcast Hour, 12:25 pm on 17 November 2018

Could listening to other people's stories be an important way to build empathy- that valuable ability to put yourself in someone else's position to understand their feelings?

That's one of the interesting ideas getting explored in an art installation that's now become a podcast called A Mile in My Shoes.

The arty part of the idea is that a shipping container designed to look like a shoe box arrives in your town. You borrow a real pair of someone else's shoes, put on your headphones and go for a walk while you listen to a story lasting about 10 minutes from the shoes' owners. And these stories come from a collection featuring people from all walks of life, from sex workers to surgeons, from refugees to the rescue services.

Now the borrowing the shoes part isn't going to be an option if you subscribe to the podcast, but we speak to artist Clare Patey who set up the project about how it all works and play Dianne Lawrence's story produced by Meri Fatin for A Mile In My Shoes.