Hello Lamp Post is a walking trail with 16 points of interest to visit across Leicester’s city centre. You can walk them all at a leisurely pace in one day or take in a few of them in an hour. The choice of route is entirely yours! You can pick up a print map in Leicester’s Tourist Information Centre (King Richard III Visitor Centre), Phoenix, LCB Depot or the New Walk Museum.

Hello Lamp Post encourages people to look at the city with fresh eyes. It gives citizens a chance to slow down, reflect and feedback to the city.  It brings the city and citizens closer together by encouraging people to have two-way ‘chats’ with their surroundings, providing people with key local information whilst hearing about opinions and challenges faced at the same time. Hello Lamp Post is designed to increase participation and engagement with the local environment. In Leicester, the installation connects 16 points of interest and has been programmed to chat about the history of their locality and how citizens feel about the area, as well as generally about how they are feeling.

To chat with a point of interest, look out for the signs on lamp posts and railings near to local landmarks (see map below for locations), and follow the instructions. The conversation will then soon begin, so find out what each object has to say. You can come back any time. Each object will remember you and have a fresh conversation with you.

All messages are anonymous.  Standard network rates apply.

Chat information will be anonymously shared with the City Council and your feedback may be used to inform decision-making about local improvements!

We illustrate the walking trail you can experience below in our short video – enjoy!

A chatbot is a software application used to conduct an on-line chat conversation via text or text-to-speech, in lieu of providing direct contact with a human. A chatbot is a type of software that can automate conversations and interact with people through messaging platforms. Designed to convincingly simulate the way a human would behave as a conversational partner, chatbot systems require continuous tuning and testing – in effect, the AI continues to learn from the interactions it has with people over time. The term ‘ChatterBot’ was originally coined by Michael Mauldin (creator of the first Verbot) in 1994 to describe conversational programs. 

When you cannot tell if the interaction you are having is with an AI or a human, then the chatbot has passed the Turing Test!  

Chatbots are now commonly used systems on smartphones and for in-home devices that have been enabled appropriately – Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant are typical examples of everyday chatbots we now use.  Chatbots are also now commonly used by businesses, accessed online via website pop-ups or through virtual assistants. They work by classifying words using natural language processors and sophisticated AI. 

Hello Lamp Post is a human-centric engagement platform that uses AI to make urban environments interactive. By digitally transforming places around the world, it encourages people to playfully interact and chat with their built environment using their mobile phone. In doing so, aims to influence improvements to areas in which people live, work and play. By repurposing street objects like lamp posts, post boxes, parking meters, statues and bus stops, Hello Lamp Post is able to create positive social change, enable community cohesion, improve local democracy and help to build people-centred cities of the future.  You can find out more about Hello Lamp Post on their website.

We would really appreciate you giving us a bit of feedback about your experience of Hello Lamp Post in Leicester – please follow this LINK to a short survey. Thanks in advance.