Students research partner cities. Local voices validate and narrate.
Authentic videos that celebrate hidden cultural heritage.
Read this first — this one rule governs every week below.
Ground-Up Voices runs on a single, deliberate role-reversal. Each cohort plays two roles at once: as researchers they study the partner city — the one they can't visit — and as locals they validate the partner's research about their own city, then film it on location, because only they can physically reach the sites.
Why it matters: the outsider's fresh eyes surface what locals overlook; the locals' knowledge keeps it accurate and lets them film it authentically. Neither cohort could make these videos alone — that is the collaboration.
Paul McEntee — Project Lead & Coordinator
Faculty of International Tourism Management, Tokyo
mcentee@toyo.jp
Runs day-to-day coordination for the Toyo cohort, manages Instagram / Drive monitoring, and is first point of contact for cross-team escalation on both sides during the pilot.
Dr. S. Thanam
School of Hospitality, Tourism & Events, Lakeside Campus
Taylor's-side Admin Leader for the pilot — students follow her project account and she coordinates the Taylor's cohort.
Every student creates a dedicated, project-only Instagram account before Week 1 — separate from their personal account. This keeps the collaboration professional, easy for faculty to monitor, and simple to hand over at the end of the pilot.
First name + first 2 letters of surname + GUV + school code
School codes: TY = Toyo · TU = Taylor's. “GUV” keeps this account distinct from any other Toyo COIL programme.
Examples: Yuki Suzuki (Toyo) → YukiSUGUVTY · Aisyah Rahman (Taylor's) → AisyahRAGUVTU
Each paired team produces one collaborative video, built from a segment each local team films about its own city and stitched into a single co-produced piece.
Each week: what both cohorts do, what happens on Instagram (the conversational layer) and Google Drive (the structured layer), a prompt box of sample language, and the week's outcome. Prompt boxes are starting points, not scripts — students adapt them to their own voice.