Exploring Festival Performance as a 'State of Encounter'
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Leeds
Department Name: Sch of Performance & Cultural Industries
Abstract
This project is a collaboration between Leeds Metropolitan University (Rebekka Kill) and Leeds University (Alice Bayliss). We want to establish a research network in the area of Festival Performance for both industry and academic practitioners. The focus of this will be the popular music festival as a potential site for new types of performance. We will set up a network that will focus on Performance, Improvisation and Embodied Knowledge within the festival context with a view to uncovering issues relating to Transmission and Memory.
We want to establish a Festival Performance hub based within the City of Leeds, thereby meshing existing expertise at University of Leeds and Leeds Metropolitan University. We also want to identify and map existing work in this field (both practice based and theoretical) through dialogue, field work and archiving. Furthermore we'll create an on-line database for communication, collaboration and investigation amongst practitioners and academics alike.
The backbone of this research network are four seminar events over a period of two years with participants invited from academia and industry.We hope that after this funding we will be able to move on to a focussed, collaborative project stemming from the work of the initial phase.
We want to establish a Festival Performance hub based within the City of Leeds, thereby meshing existing expertise at University of Leeds and Leeds Metropolitan University. We also want to identify and map existing work in this field (both practice based and theoretical) through dialogue, field work and archiving. Furthermore we'll create an on-line database for communication, collaboration and investigation amongst practitioners and academics alike.
The backbone of this research network are four seminar events over a period of two years with participants invited from academia and industry.We hope that after this funding we will be able to move on to a focussed, collaborative project stemming from the work of the initial phase.
Organisations
People |
ORCID iD |
| Alice O'Grady (Principal Investigator) | |
| Rebekka Kill (Co-Investigator) |
Publications
O'Grady A
(2013)
Exploring festival performance as a state of encounter
in Arts and Humanities in Higher Education
| Title | Festival Memories |
| Description | As part of the network "Festival Performance as a State of Encounter", an interactive installation was set up at Leeds Metropolitan University as a way of gathering festival stories from members of the public. As well as being a method of gathering data in various forms (including video, audio, drawings, sketches etc.), it functioned as a way of engaging members of the public in a novel way with the research. The installation was created as a festival space within a building. Audience members could enter the yurts that were set up and interact with materials inside as a way of stimulating their memories. |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Year Produced | 2009 |
| Impact | The installation raised awareness of the project both within the Universities involved but also for members of the public who engaged with it. The gathering of data from the installation fed into the publications that emerged from the project later. |
| Description | One of the key findings of the network was the development of the term 'relational performance' within the context of the popula music festival industry. One of the key outcomes of the project was to begin to consider the potential impact of relational performance - in terms of both its contribution to the production and consumption of festival experience and also its contribution to the development of participatory performance practice. The academic-industry collaboration was central to the d |
| Exploitation Route | The project was devised on the basis of academic-industry collaboration so its application in non-academic contexts was prioritised from the start. Participants involved in the four seminars across the lifespan of the network were drawn from a number of non-academic contexts and took back findings from the discussions and workshops to their individual setttings. These included festival programming, management and curation; professional performance practice; broadcast media and cultural tourism. |
| Sectors | Creative Economy,Other |
| URL | http://projects.beyondtext.ac.uk/stateofencounter/index.php |
| Description | Findings from the network grant were built into and developed in the Small Grant that followed. Findings were used specifically by the aerial performance company, Urban Angels Circus, who now use the research as part of their own practice in terms of developing relational performance. Their work has now been seen by a large number of people at festivals in the UK and internationally who have been able to experience and participate in relational performance of this kind. Findings from this initial award have continued to grow and develop within the academy. What began as a specific project on festival performance has now developed into a broader consideration of participatory performance and risky aesthetics which is being headed by the PI. A call went out to the international community for participation in an edited collection (due for publication 2016) and this attracted unprecedented interest. Further impact activities are being planned in order to respond to this surge in interest in this field. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2010 |
| Sector | Creative Economy,Leisure Activities, including Sports, Recreation and Tourism |
| Impact Types | Cultural,Economic |
| Title | N.B. This has not been completed. The reasons are listed in the 'changes' section |
| Description | |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Provided To Others? | No |