PER – Flow Associates

Kings College London Divergent Sounds

A sonic exploration of neurodivergent identities, Dr Virginia Carter Leno

Divergent Sounds was a co-created project to communicate neurodivergent identities and experiences to those without lived experience. KCL researchers worked with London Sinfonia to use music to the audience in the idea of neurodivergent worlds. The project set out to to increase awareness and understanding of neuro-divergence, challenge the idea of the “normal”, and encourage people to reflect on how we could make the world more inclusive for people with all different types of minds. The final composition was developed with focus groups and a composer who identified as neuro-diverse. Divergent Sounds was performed at the Southbank Centre to over 300 people.

Flow Associates worked with Principle Investigator Virginia Carter Leno over the course of two years from the project initiation to the final evaluation and best-practice sharing toolkit for researchers integrating creative commissions in communicating their work.

Flow used a Theory of Change (ToC) methodology, exploring with the researcher the ‘why’ of her project in terms of the impacts she hopes to have on people and society, and working back from that to outline shorter term change for stakeholders, and the steps she would take to bring these about. Working together in this way enabled the researcher to articulate the outcomes they hoped to bring about at the start of the project, informing the activities they would produce to do so.

This ToC also underpinned our evaluation framework and the tools we designed to gather insights, and provided a structure for the final report. We worked closely with KCL to design accessible evaluation tools and to think about the experience of the audience at the Southbank Centre. This included designing stickers for audience members to wear to show if they were open to being spoken to, sticker voting activities, an accessible visual score of the composition communicating potential triggers and stations for onsite support and conversation with the evaluation and research team. We carried out an evaluation of the impact of the digital interventions of the project, including the live transcription during the show, supporting accessible programme guides, and the broadcast and recording of the performance.

Being Human Festival: 2023 Evaluation

Flow Associates were commissioned to carry out an evaluation of the 2022 Being Human Festival, building on previous years’ research by assessing the impact of the festival for humanities reasearchers, the wider public, research organisations, universities, funders and cultural partners. We have shifted the focus of evaluation away from quantitative monitoring and towards a more impact and qualitative focused model, creating recommendations enabling the festival to:

• Become sustainable by identifying and understanding their visitors, creating an offer that keeps them engaged by visiting and supporting the festival
• Continue to develop their audiences
• Build new relationships, partnerships and collaborations

The Being Human Festival seeks to make contemporary thought, ideas and experiences connected with humanities research accessible to members of the public. The festival is run by the School of Advanced Study (SAS), University of London, in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the British Academy. It extends participation to universities, museums and (university) libraries across the country and is a chance for each organising body to connect with their local arts and culture provision and to reach out to members of the public of all ages to engage with them in what it means to ‘be human’.

We undertook a large scale review of festival activity including:

1. Audience survey with c.2,000 responses
2. Event organiser surveys and interviews in the UK and Australia
3. Stakeholder surveys and interviews
4. Festival team, funder and critical friend workshop after the festival to reflect on findings and set strategies for coming years

Project Tag: PER

Kings College London Divergent Sounds

Being Human Festival: 2023 Evaluation