A red telephone box containing recorded audio monologues of local people's stories is setting off on a six-month tour of Barnsley's libraries after being housed at the town's Civic Arts Centre since January. The "Calling Barnsley" project was created by Lung Theatre, whose co-directors say it celebrates the distinctive way people in the town tell stories, and forms part of a wider push to bring cultural projects out into local communities rather than keeping them confined to the town centre.

Theatre students at Barnsley College helped collect and record more than 60 two-minute stories over a two-year period, working with vocal actors to turn them into monologues that visitors hear by picking up the handset and dialling a number, much like a real phone box, which was widened for wheelchair access. The stories, later published as a book by Faber and Faber, range from a tale of a community Christmas lights display in Thurnscoe to a lecturer's account of being hit by a kebab on a night out. From 4 September the box will spend a month at The Lightbox in Barnsley Central Library before moving to libraries in Royston, Cudworth, Atherley, Goldthorpe and Penistone, plus a stop at Persistence Works Sheffield for the University of Sheffield's Festival of the Mind.