Ensuring the relevance of grassroots venue experiences by facilitating deeper social cohesion between unestablished music artists and local audiences in London, UK.
Grassroots music venues are struggling in the UK, in contrast to the festivalisation, corporatisation and globalisation of live music. These venues are essential to the music ecosystem and contribute largely to local economies. Ensuring a future relevance of grassroots venue experiences is therefore essential. While social cohesion plays an integral role in the concert experience, new audiences struggle to connect with unestablished artists due to a lack of prior emotional connection and knowledge of the performed music.
This workshop allows to co-design unique concert experiences with these artists through the collective exploration of participatory warm-ups, space dynamics and storytelling practices. By emphasising on the unique sense of intimacy of small venue experiences, we aim to facilitate social cohesion between artists and audiences, and sustain grassroots live music experiences in the music ecosystem.
Using directed storytelling to explore our initial inquiries.
At the start of the project, our main question was how do people describe the experience of live music and what qualities of liveness? We conducted four interviews where we asked the simple questions of "Tell us a story of the craziest concert experience you have been to?” Our main takeaway from these interviews was how the experience is co-created by the audience and performer, facilitated by the music.
Bodystorming a DIY concert.
We were curious to see how people self-organised when given the tools to create their own concert experience. We booked the black box room at our University and used a projector, speakers, and lighting to create a small venue aesthetic. During this, we had two activities; participants watching a pre-recorded concert, and in the second half they were given roles to perform during the concert. This method highlighted how the virtual experience could create a passive individual experience compared the second half where participants had an embodied experience where they reported feeling more connected.
What is the future of concerts?
Through the use of a speculative design workshop, we explored how shows will be changing through the social, technological, economic, environmental, and political lens. Participants believed that many physical events would have virtual elements interwoven throughout the experience but would be more inclusive to minority groups.
Conducting field research.
During 10 performances we conducted 32 interviews. We talked to people generally of the same age, which ranged from 19 to 29. Our interviews mainly were with concertgoers, but we also spoke to some staff members and a musician. We transcribed the interviews and then conducted a thematic analysis. We highlighted keywords that were specific to concerts but also keywords around the social connection. After identifying keywords, we then formed thematic groups for each venue individually. The mains themes found were: Unity, Sociability, Community, Inclusion and Accessibility, and Genre of music.
Refining the scope through complexity buckets.
A self-defined method called 'complexity buckets' which we used to help find exciting subjects within a large web of complexity to design around. For our process, we gathered all the main keywords that we felt fit around live music ecologies, drawing from our literature and primary research. Some keywords were in-between buckets, and we realised that we needed to illustrate how there’s overlap between the different buckets; we also wanted to highlight how each area would influence one another. We found fascinating keywords in the concert experience area, with some overlap in inclusion and accessibility, and this is where our project started to head.
What creates a socially cohesive concert?
This workshop was to get initial ideas from stakeholders, to see how they view connections between artists and audiences, and how they would want to establish a relationship. Whilst the workshop was not entirely successful we managed to find interesting avenues of design such as one participant equating liveness to a religious ceremony.
Sensory experiments and making cultural artefacts.
We needed to start making lo-fi prototypes from the ideation workshop, informed by our research thus far, to comprehend the design’s primary focus. This was our research through design; this session would consist of multiple lo-fidelity prototypes. Some interactions were about creating a stronger connection between the artist and the audience, whilst the other interactions had audiences create artefacts to feel connected to the venue itself. We found that the interactions between artist and audience created a stronger sense connection and that we should utilize the intimacy of the small venue spaces.
Rituals and co-designing performances.
During the iteration phase we explored the use of ritualistic elements within the concert experience. We used string to create a "magic circle" and had the artist and audience go through a warm-ritual together. Whilst elements like the circle did not continue forwards, the use of warming-up together did.
Later, we co-designed a warm-up ritual with moments of interaction with the audience to help increase the connection with the artist. However, the moments of interactions felt lacking in depth and that's when we realised that we needed to add a narrative element to our design.
A co-designed narrative performance.
Our final outcome was a co-designed performance unique to that's artists lived experience that incorporated active participation, space dynamics and communal environments, and emotional connections and shared identity.
The design outcome took the form of a workshop, during which unestablished artists were invited to design their own engaging performance after a prior exploration of collective warm-ups and spatial dynamics, and a definition of their personal story. The workshop and the resulted experiences were documented in the form of an edited video for communication and assessment purposes. By emphasising on the unique sense of intimacy of small venue experiences, we aim to facilitate social cohesion between artists and audiences, and sustain grassroots live music experiences in the music ecosystem
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The design outcome took the form of a workshop, during which unestablished artists were invited to design their own engaging performance after a prior exploration of collective warm-ups and spatial dynamics, and a definition of their personal story. The workshop and the resulted experiences were documented in the form of an edited video for communication and assessment purposes.
By emphasising on the unique sense of intimacy of small venue experiences, we aim to facilitate social cohesion between artists and audiences, and sustain grassroots live music experiences in the music ecosystem
