Heritage Empath - An Embodied Storytelling Experience

Lead Research Organisation: University of the West of England
Department Name: Fac of Arts Creative Ind and Education

Abstract

Heritage Empath explores the use of locative mobile media to inspire empathy in human social relations. The project is particularly interested in historical empathy - challenging visitors at historical landscapes and sites of heritage to step into the shoes of past generations, facilitating a more subjective engagement with past events and circumstances than would otherwise be possible. Heritage offers a viable framework for testing empathic approaches because it attracts broad public interest, and enthusiastic public audiences on whom to test project outputs. Visitors to historic sites are familiar with questions of perspective, evidence, and intention when being invited to think about historical actors and situations, and with imaginative approaches to historical reconstruction and interpretation. Heritage organisations such as the National Trust and Historic Royal Palaces have shown a good deal of interest in developing more immersive, 'realistic', affective and emotional experiences for their visitors in recent years, and a number of innovative approaches have now been trialled. However, little or no research has been carried out to assess what an empathic visitor engagement might require or the extent to which existing models have been successful. Heritage Empath seeks to do three things therefore: 1) to reach a better understanding of the value of empathy as an applicable and practical tool in problem solving, 2) to research current best practice (both in and beyond the heritage field) and build an application for empathic engagement that works and is designed to be adaptable for use in a variety of fields in human social relations, 3) to test that knowledge by building a case study around past and present experiences of migration in a single British city, Bristol. Heritage Empath collects and curates the personal stories of historical and living migrants to the city and incorporates them into an immersive and interactive experience, freely downloadable to personal mobile devices, and then carefully evaluating its impact upon audiences. Using this framework as a basis, we hope to create a simple to use, adaptable product for marketing to stakeholders in the heritage industry and to ask, can challenges to social relations in the present day be beneficially approached through association with comparative historical experience? Can we better understand contemporary social problems through the perspective and experience of others, by first encountering them in the 'safety zone' of historical imagination? Heritage Empath works with past experience, in place, and then applies it to the present in innovative and subjective form.

Planned Impact

Who will benefit?

The project has three primary impact targets: Heritage and museum professionals, communities traditionally regarded as 'hard to reach' by the heritage sector, and practitioners in the experience design sector of the creative economy. It is anticipated however, that impact will extend beyond these sectors to a much wider range of potential beneficiaries. Empathic approaches to conflict resolution and social cohesion, for example, have very broad application and although the project is framed in the first instance as a heritage interpretation tool, it is explicitly intended that outputs will be adaptable for use in wider arenas. Equally, although two specific heritage audiences are addressed, we expect benefits for all audiences that engage with it.

How will they benefit?

Heritage and museum professionals will benefit from the research we conduct into the current and potential use of empathic software in experience design as well as from the material output of the project. We anticipate keen interest from this sector and we expect our work to influence future trends in empathic experience design. Two 'hard to reach' communities are envisaged as beneficiaries: young people and Black & minority ethnic (BME) communities. The project will be developed iteratively through a series of workshops in every stage of production, and work with both these groups will be emphasised. BME participants will be closely involved in the collection of oral histories of migration and we will appoint an RA with particular expertise in and familiarity with this field of research. BME participants are expected to benefit therefore, not only by making their stories and experience heard, but as co-curators of project outputs and, more broadly, as potential audiences at the project's conclusion. Similarly, we will work with youth groups through two successful organisations, the Cultural Youth Forum and My Future My Choice, the educational arm of the Bristol Charitable Initiative Trust. It has an excellent reputation for aspirational work with groups of young people from Bristol's more geographically peripheral schools, and the Principal Investigator has collaborated with them on historically-informed themes for a number of years. Importantly, the project will also create impact for Splash & Ripple and the wider experience design sector of the creative economy. By working collaboratively with university academics on the core design dimensions of the Empath experience, and with support from the Advisory Board, Splash & Ripple will be able to bring a powerful new audio augmented reality offer to the marketplace. With this, they will help clients from a range of backgrounds tell their stories in a new and powerful way. As a small creative company, Splash & Ripple regularly work in response to client briefs but rarely have the opportunity to develop their own projects. In these circumstances, it is often difficult to nurture pure research or creative and theoretical development. But Heritage Empath will create a step change for deepening the company's creative output through allowing them space to focus primarily on development of design aspects of the concept, as well as prototype software bases.

Publications

10 25 50
 
Title Of Home and Each Other: an embdied storytelling experience 
Description Not sure if 'performance' is quite the right nomenclature, but Of Home and Each Other was a major output of the Heritage Empath project. Based on testimony gathered from 23 in-depth interviews with first and second generation migrants to Bristol and a series of developmental workshops, OHAEO is an interactive and immersive audio drama experienced in real time and in the real world. It was scripted by Zodwa Nyoni and directed by Rosie Poebright of project partners Splash and Ripple. Participants are given a phone and headphones and left to explore Bristol's Broadmead shopping centre inside the head of a young migrant woman, Kelechi as she is torn between a new life and new relationships in Bristol and memories of her past life in the country she left. It is not a passive experience - participants are required to make decisions as Kelechi. 
Type Of Art Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) 
Year Produced 2018 
Impact we have commissioned a through evaluation of OHAEO and we expect it to be completed in April 2019. At this stage, therefore, impact evidence is not available. 
URL https://www.watershed.co.uk/whatson/9490/of-home-and-each-other/
 
Title Play Inside 
Description Play Inside is an immersive digital experience created by our project partners, Splash and Ripple during lockdown in 2020. It further develops the immersive single-player format created for Heritage Empath through greater focus on embodied experience in the user's own home. Individual scripted stories are shared and downloaded between participants allowing them to mirror one another's actions, thoughts and feelings in a common domestic interior - the home. 
Type Of Art Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) 
Year Produced 2021 
Impact Play Inside was initially funded by a small development grant from Arts Council England, and has since been selected for further development through Columbia University's Digital Dozen awards 
URL http://digitaldozen.io/projects/play-inside/
 
Description The key challenge of this project was to create immersive, participatory and situated audio software capable of taking public audiences into another person's mental world and to increase understanding of identity and heritage through researched empathetic storytelling. It should be stated here that detailed summative key findings were still being assessed at the researchfish deadline date and we will be in a position to say considerably more once the data analysis of the evaluation on the final project iteration is completed in April 2019. This means that we are not yet a position to report with confidence on audience feedback or to reflect upon its significance for the project as a whole.

However, developing a useful evaluation model for the project was challenging in itself - how does one measure (or define) not just understanding but levels of subjective emotional engagement, 'feeling', and empathetic response in a public audience of 300 individuals? After trialling different kinds of questionnaire/interview during earlier testing we developed a new evaluation model designed to identify patterns of experience based on 3 distinct areas of experience: Affect and Understanding, Resonance and Empathy, Technique and Form. This is an evaluation method modelled on approaches frequently used for the analysis of phenomenological and practice-based research for participatory events. Audience members were asked to take part in dialogical interviews, complete written forms and agree to follow-up interviews a few weeks after the initial experience. There is a great deal still to be learned about the effective evaluation of immersive subjective experiences - and this is an issue of key importance at the moment - but we feel we have developed a potentially useful model here.

Another key learning outcome concerned the conduct of the oral interviews from which Heritage Empath would be developed. We needed to create a 'realistic' yet compelling piece of storytelling that would work in a contemporary urban environment in real time while also moving audiences between past and present experience of the world, based upon the articulated memories of first and second generation migrants. Empathetic association is built not just upon empirical reconstruction but on emotional connection - so we needed to ask our migrant interviewees to recall and describe their innermost feelings about both the places they had left behind and the experience of leaving, arrival and assimilation in Britain. We sought a common language through which attachment and the affective recognition of 'home', 'heritage', and 'belonging' might be translated into transferable and recognisable experience. Unsurprisingly, this was not always easy to achieve and some of our earliest interview sessions did not produce the material we hoped for. Much was learned about the structuring of oral interviews for bespoke ends however, ultimately enabling us to accumulate a useful archive of material. We interviewed 23 people in total, working with three oral historians over a period of eight weeks, spending many hours with some interviewees and making return visits in some cases. We feel we now have a viable model for future use and adaptation.
Exploitation Route We believe Empath can be taken forward for adaptive use in a variety of settings and contexts. Most obviously it can be used to enhance the visitor experience at sites of heritage and will be of interest to organisations such as Historic England, the National Trust and Historic Royal Palaces, for example - or any environment in which it might be productive to engage visitors with personal and empathetic encounters with historical actors and situations. Empath has wider potential than that however, and Splash and Ripple intend developing the platform for use not only in heritage but in other areas where it might help participants to understand the perspective of others through embodied experience.
Sectors Communities and Social Services/Policy

Creative Economy

Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software)

Leisure Activities

including Sports

Recreation and Tourism

Government

Democracy and Justice

Culture

Heritage

Museums and Collections

 
Description Evidence of impact has been growing but the covid pandemic from March 2020 has hampered follow-on developments over the last two years. Firstly, there have been some important technical challenges in the design of the software for Empath. These have been met iteratively but we believe that in some areas of binaural sound design, for example, impact has begun to be felt for project partners and collaborators in the creative industries - especially Splash and Ripple and other residents and users of Bristol Watershed's Pervasive Media Studio who shared in our work. Splash and Ripple were invited to work with the BBC on binaural experimentation and further iterations of Empath were tested in adapted environments during 2019/20. In 2020 Splash and Ripple developed a new immersive and empathetic audio experience, 'Play Inside', funded by Arts Council England. It enables single users to mirror the activities and thoughts of another person by moving around in their own homes while interacting with a downloaded app on their own mobile device. Play Inside was developed directly from the work we completed together for Ourselves and Each Other/ Heritage Empath. Splash and Ripple are continuing to explore the potential of immersive digital platforms for work of this kind and it has become clear to us that the market for creative interventions of this kind has been expanding since March 2020 in response to the challenges presented by lockdown during the Covid-19 pandemic. These are reflective pieces, designed to be experienced in isolation and, in the case of Play Inside, in the player's own home. Play Inside has since won a substantial award from Columbia University's Digital Dozen programme and Splash and Ripple will be developing an international model of the project in collaboration with women in Palestine. Secondly (see Engagement Activities), we tested several iterations of the software design on public audiences, including young people through a series of workshops facilitated in partnership with the Bristol Creative Youth Network. Impact on these test groups was informally monitored and this assisted us in the making of the project's final prototype for public performance as 'Of Home and Each Other' (see Engagement Activities) in Bristol's Broadmead shopping centre in December 2018. We felt that the young people we reached in these workshops began to comprehend their own lives as narratives over which they have influence and to understand the comparative inner lives of others. Soft evaluation was fed forward into the R&D process for Empath. Extensive user evaluation was carried out over ten days of OHAEO performances in Broadmead and the data and findings from these were carefully analysed by project RA Yiota Demetriou. This extremely innovative and thorough evaluative report has been described in greater detail under 'Other Outputs'. Demetriou took a performative and phenomenological approach (IPA) to textual analysis, which is (qualitative) interpretive, and reflective, based on exploring the context as dialogic, that has emerged from interaction (interviewer/interviewee) post-event of lived accounts, and highly dependant on the audience's experiences. This ties in with the framework/methodology designed for capturing data. Yiota conducted semi-structured interviews, and online questionnaires, intended to survey overall patterns of experiences described in audience feedback. Data was evaluated in consideration of three overarching themes related to the project: Affect and Understanding, Resonance and Empathy, Technique and Form. This mode of analysis has emerged from Demetriou's academic expertise and prior work in phenomenology and practice-based research of participatory events (theatre-as-research, performance-as-research, and psychogeography). The approach taken, allows for a survey into the perceptions, perspectives, understandings, and feelings of those audiences who experienced Of Home and Each Other, leading to findings about the benefits of experiencing embodied locative narrative events. In many ways, the launch functioned as a test-bed in a live setting to measure the causal affect of the curated experience, afforded by the combination of the narrative and immersive technology, with participant interaction. Data was evaluated in consideration of three overarching themes related to the project, that emerged from the questions asked during the interviews, but also were highlighted topics from interviewee responses: Affect and Understanding, Resonance and Empathy, Technique and Form. From the overall feedback, it is understood that the experience as a whole, whether discussed through technology, storytelling, place, had a positive impact on audiences, and that every participant took something different from it, and had to say something about it. The full 28 page report is available from Splash and Ripple on request.
First Year Of Impact 2019
Sector Creative Economy,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Leisure Activities, including Sports, Recreation and Tourism,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections
Impact Types Cultural

Societal

 
Description Feeling the Past symposium 
Organisation Bristol City Council
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Public 
PI Contribution For our Symposium (see engagement activities) we ran the call for papers and organised all academic and audience aspects
Collaborator Contribution The Culture team at Bristol City Council were jointly badged as organisers and provided a large room at the M Shed museum on the harbourside, technical equipment, staffing on the day, full technical support and in-house publicity
Impact The symposium, Feeling the Past (see engagement activities)
Start Year 2018
 
Description Feeling the Past symposium 
Organisation Bristol City Council
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Public 
PI Contribution For our Symposium (see engagement activities) we ran the call for papers and organised all academic and audience aspects
Collaborator Contribution The Culture team at Bristol City Council were jointly badged as organisers and provided a large room at the M Shed museum on the harbourside, technical equipment, staffing on the day, full technical support and in-house publicity
Impact The symposium, Feeling the Past (see engagement activities)
Start Year 2018
 
Description Bristol Creative Youth Network workshops 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Local
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Empathy development workshops were held to engage young people with the central aims of the project and to bring them in as participants. Four sessions between May and June 2018 were organised by the Bristol Creative Youth Network and run by youth worker Michelle Roche at Hillfields Community Centre, Speedwell (a Bristol suburb and an area of underprivilege) with local YPs. Nineteen young people took part overall. Empathetic storytelling and self-awareness techniques were used to encourage participants to narrativise their (outer and subconscious) life experience and to share personal stories with one another. Creative writing and theatrical gaming tools were used to help unpick narratives.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
 
Description Empath prototype - developmental public trial 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Trial run for Empath (15 May 2018) running as part of The Bristol Architecture Centre's 'WalkFest' and in collaboration with Legible Cities. Public participants were given headsets and sent into Bristol, 'an audio-augmetned drama simulating the interior experience of someone else's life'. Led by Rosie Poebright (Splash and Ripple). Audience feedback session at the end. This event was sold out.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
URL https://www.architecturecentre.org.uk/whats-on/empath/
 
Description Of Home and Each Other: An Interactive Audio Experience - 10 day public run for major project output 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Of Home and Each Other was a 10 day public performance located in Bristol's Broadmead Shopping Centre. 300 participants were given headsets and a phone from a base in MacDonalds, Broadmead, and then sent out for a 40 minute audio experience inside the head of Kelechi, a young female migrant at a critical point in her life. This embodied and interactive piece of storytelling was produced by Splash and Ripple for Heritage Empath and scripted by Zodwa Nyoni. It marked the culmination of the project. Full evaluation is now taking place from individual and group interviews conducted straight after the event and in follow up calls, and should be complete by April 2019. We collaborated with Bristol Watershed art centre for publicity and box office. A longer legacy film is currently in production, but a link to a short trailer, produced as an advertisement on the Watershed booking page is attached here.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
URL https://www.watershed.co.uk/whatson/9490/of-home-and-each-other/
 
Description Public Exhibition at Bristol Architecture Centre: You Are Here 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact You Are Here was a public exhibition (25 April - 25 June 2018) at the Bristol Architecture Centre celebrating the city's Legible City project. Empath took part and had display space; showed promotonal film shorts etc.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
URL https://www.architecturecentre.org.uk/whats-on/you-are-here/
 
Description Public Symposium: Feeling the Past - Empathy, Heritage and the Museum 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Feeling the Past was a one day symposium organised in December 2018 to platform and launch the culminating performance piece for the Heritage Empath project, 'Of Home and Each Other'. 70 people attended from all over the country and there were 10 speakers. Attendees came from a broad range of professional heritage, curatorial, practitioner, academic, and public backgrounds. The symposium was focussed on the central research questions underpinning Heritage Empath: is it possible to use new technologies to engage heritage audiences empathetically, subjectively and dialogically? The full programme for the day is attached via the link below. In impact terms, the most important development was a decision to maintain and develop a new international (European) network of heritage and museum professionals, academics and creative practitioners to maintain dialogue about developments in this rapidly expanding area of heritage interpretation.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
URL https://www.dcrc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Symposium-Booklet-Final.pdf
 
Description Public talk at Bristol Architecture Centre 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Public talk at the Bristol Architecture Centre during WalkFest on the subject of Legible Cities. Angie Bual from project partners Splash and Ripple was one of three presenters on the ways to 'integrate innovative research, art and new technologies to help map the city'. Angie talked about Heritage Empath.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
URL https://www.architecturecentre.org.uk/whats-on/we-are-here/
 
Description Watershed public talk 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Presentation in Watershed Bristol's weekly lunchtime slot by Rosie Poebright, creative director of Splash and Ripple (project's industry partners), on Empathy and Vulnerability in the Creative Process
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2017