Deep Time Walk is an app which takes users on a journey to experience a history of the living earth. The community interest company behind the app participated in the pilot to raise the funding required to increase the reach of the app, including the redesign of their website, the creation of new promotional material and the streamlining of their social media activities. We spoke to Robert, Director of Product Management and Outreach, about the progress they have made since the campaign, as well as how crowdfunding has generated human capital, crucial to their ongoing success.

Robert described Deep Time Walk’s function as “a way to stimulate people to connect with the deep ancestral heritage of the Earth and the land and ecosystem around them”. Users of the app experience a dramatised audio narrative that combines science and poetry to describe a history of the earth. As you walk, you hear the story of how the planet has transformed over these vast stretches of time, providing a unique and educational perspective of deep time.

The partnership with the Edinburgh Geological Society exemplifies what Robert identified as the main impact of the crowdfunding campaign - the “significant exposure to audiences we wouldn't have reached”. He went on to discuss that these new connections were not only short-term, but that “long-term relationships were created which [we] wouldn’t have had otherwise” , and which the Deep Time Walk team have worked to maintain and nurture. This reflection on how the immediate benefit of the campaign evolved into lasting connections with audiences supports our research findings on the longer term impacts associated with crowdfunding.

Robert referred to a surprising benefit of crowdfunding around the continued support provided by donors. He discussed that crowdfunding was about “the ability to attract not just financial, but moral support and encouragement”, which formed the basis of developing partnerships as referred to previously. Deep Time Walk is “still living off the financial and human capital generated by the campaign”, thus emphasising the value a successful campaign can have on a small organisation.

For Deep Time Walk CIC, the financial support that came with running a successful crowdfunding campaign was matched by the relationships built from interacting with backers. The widespread exposure generated led to moral support and encouragement, which the Deep Time Walk team turned into beneficial partnerships that have helped elevate the project.

To find out more about Deep Time Walk, check out their website. Additionally, they have recently released an update to their app, which you can read about here.