Distributed Listening - socially engaged art

The 8 month impact proposal builds on past AHRC funded research into network music performance. Those results are here applied in a participatory theatre context. The main impacts consist of enabling theatre practitioners and participating communities to engage in network music performance strategies/technologies, normally only available in HE institutions. This engagement will have transformative qualities for relationships between sound, everyday life and mobile transmission technologies. The PI, a musician and theorist, investigated how performers make music together when not in the same physical space, specifically how they listen to each other. This research used different types of musical notation (3D rendered graphics, improvisational strategies, graphic scores). The PI carried out ca. 20 different types of network performances including performing with musicians in a virtual world. The experience of playing different types of music (strictly notated jazz tunes, guided improvisation, graphically scored music and entirely free improvisations) led to questions of who leads, conducts or makes decisions in a situation where several cities are connected with musicians in each place. It was found that physical absence of another performer allows musicians to focus closely on the relation with their instrument, their breathing and gestures; and finally, it ask performers to listen in quite different ways, what the PI terms 'distributed or network[ed] listening'. In the network musicians listen to their own sounds, to the sounds of remote performers, but also to sounds circulated through the network, which can be 'jittery' due to often fragile technical infrastructure. The network reveals subtle differences between being 'here' and 'there', between the 'self' and the 'other', between 'listening' and 'being listened to' and between body and instrument.
This impact proposal aims to extract such type of fragile listening, 'distributed listening', to an environment outside the well-equipped university context. Therefore, we will develop a custom-designed app for mobile devices (smart phones) that allows young community participants to explore such listening, while at the same time enabling them to play and create together in a distributed setting. We have teamed up with two theatre companies, the Lyric Theatre, Belfast and 42nd Street, Manchester. 42nd Street is a young people's mental health charity providing innovative services to young people with mental health problems. Both companies regularly work with community participants, practising 'socially engaged arts', a form of active citizenship, art that intends to effect social change, that is artist-led and participant focussed. Both theatre companies have identified 20 young adults each who, during 8 weeks workshops will learn to use the app in order to create a creative theatre piece based on the idea of 'distributed listening'. Each city will create a context specific work, using the custom-designed app. Each community group will showcase their work in 2016.
A video artist will accompany both companies' working processes, creating video diaries for documentation on the project's website. The custom-designed app will also be used for a one day of hands-on workshops with school children in Northern Ireland, taking place at the Science Festival, which is supporting this project. The final part of the project includes an impact conference where all participants from Manchester and Belfast will meet, and, alongside invited industry speakers, will share the project's creative outcomes, including the video diaries, the documented showcases and the app design.
The project was developed in close communication between the named theatre companies, the PI, Co-I, the Science Festival, Arts & Business NI and the Young Vic, London, to ensure greatest possible impact and visibility.

The 8 month project was designed collaboratively with 2 theatre companies to engage participants outside of the academic research community; thus it responds to the needs of a well-defined user base. Built on the PI's previously funded AHRC research, we bring a research component (distributed listening) into a portable form in the shape of a newly custom-designed app for mobile devices. This allows transfer of previous research into a new community beyond a well-equipped research center and thus can enhance the value and impact of that former research. Two theatre companies, with whom this project has been developed collaboratively, identified a specific need of engaging young people in listening and in discovering the role of sound in everyday life. The proposal was developed according to those needs, and we will collaborate with the Lyric Theatre, Belfast and young adults aged between 16 and 25. They run a weekly theatre school, using professional theatre practitioners to deliver a series of drama classes. Our project will run within these classes to bring a new component, that of distributed listening to their creative work.

We will also work with 42nd Street, directed by Julie McCarthy, a young people's mental health charity committed to supporting young people (aged 11 - 25 years) under stress. 42nd Street has an extensive 30-year track record of providing innovative services to young people experience mental health problems. They specifically target young people who are at a higher risk of mental ill health due to poor access to services, including LGBT young people, disabled young people, young parents and carers. In 2016, they will transform an empty Victorian shop into a three storey creative space for young people. This project is connected to their on-going work and vision of socially engaged arts, a form of active citizenship, commissioned to effect social change. At the heart of our project are the participants who will, under the guidance of professional theatre facilitators, develop a piece of creative work based on 'distributed listening'.

Both groups will showcase their work after an extensive workshop period in Belfast and Manchester respectively. Impact is evidenced by theatre communities gaining access to bespoke mobile audio technologies, which can have transformative effects on how participatory and socially engaged drama develops. The workshops will enable participants to gain a greater understanding of the effects of distributed listening. This stands in contrast to starting creative processes from visual view-points, and it will engage the communities in the role of sound in everyday life. They will be able to adopt into their work practices strategies, which were developed under the PI's original research.

The project benefits from close collaborations with all partners, continuous meetings plus well-defined milestones. We have designed a public engagement component for school children in NI, teaming up with the Science Festival NI. There, the PI will run workshops for school children to use and explore listening strategies in a creative and fun way, using the custom-designed app. The project's well-defined activities of workshops and showcases in two different cities plus public engagement events for school children are integral to the proposal. We benefit from the support of Arts and Business NI, the Young Vic, London to ensure guidance on best impact strategies.

An impact conference in Belfast will unite all project partners, participants and invited speakers who will contribute to the impact agenda on socially engaged arts. An impact paper will be published collaboratively with all partners.

The innovative and creative project package will enhance the value and impact of the original research while creating a portable output in the form of an app, which in turn constitutes longer-term sustainability for potential impact beyond the award period.