ACT - Audiences Connecting Together

The ACT project is **designing and evaluating** ways to **enable audience members to feel connected to each other** when they are experiencing a show in different places. This **connection with other audience members** is a valued part of the experience of location-based productions. It is also one which tends to be **missing for audiences watching a show remotely** (e.g., from home.)

In its work on the Innovate UK funded Audience of the Future Performance Demonstrator, i2 media research limited combined both in-depth and large-scale audience research to identified that audiences were missing because of the pandemic. Connection with others during live shows came out as the thing audiences were missing most.

In the Demonstrator project's show (dream.online), we tested two ways to connect audiences at home. These were a live counter which showed how many other people were watching each show, and an interactive function, where audiences could shoot digital fireflies into the performance space to guide the main character, Puck. For some audiences, both were successful in supporting a feeling of watching the show with others.

However, lots of other mechanisms could do the same thing. And as we have learnt through our over 25 years' research on user experience of digital content some might be better.

Through ACT, we will:

\* evaluate mechanisms to support remotely located audiences to feel connected to one another;

\* test a prototype of the most easily and widely applicable mechanism, which is best at helping audiences at home feel connected to other audience members;

\* develop a detailed plan to develop this into a product and launch it; and

\* share our findings widely to best support the UK's creative and cultural sector.

**ACT's focus is of vital relevance** to the UK (and global) **creative industries**. With location-based shows cancelled during the pandemic, creative and cultural organisations lost nearly all ticket revenue. Audiences got to experience some **video streams of shows**, but nearly all **lacked solutions to support audiences feeling together**.

**Simple solutions** to help audiences at home feel connected to each other while watching live shows with others around the world will **enable arts and cultural organisations to build back better**, with stronger and more **sustainable revenue models**.

The results of this project, and its subsequent commercialisation, will also **apply to other sectors of the Creative Industries (e.g., Film and TV)**. ACT will therefore support a more sustainable and thriving creative and cultural sector.