Podcast transcripts: Working with The Space

Fiona Morris

Really, we’re looking for anything that anyone is interested to experiment with in the digital realm. And that can be projects that are looking at how you reach a new audience; how you might use a new platform to reach a new audience for really quite traditional content, kind of linear video or audio. That’s absolutely fine, that’s absolutely within scope. Or it could be right at the other end of the spectrum, and looking at experimenting with what a new type of experience might be for audiences. And there we’re looking at things that are maybe using…we’ve done quite a lot of commissioning around immersive technologies, so VR and AR based projects, but equally, it could be something really on that kind of frontier, using AI.

We’ve just done a project in our last commissioning round that was looking at voice sampling using AI. So [it was] inviting people to come and record a voice showreel. But in actual fact, there’s an AI interacting with that and basically actually analyzing your voice. And therefore, of course, once analyzed and it’s just broken down into its digital components that can be reconstructed to have you saying anything that the the AI wants you to be saying.

So things that want to experiment with how an audience might interact with content. But I think it’s also about a spirit of inquiry. And you know, there is funding here, so there’s a range of what commissioning support is available financially. And we know that everyone is pretty cash strapped at the moment, so we recognize the importance of having our funding support available. But we think and we hope that what we can provide around that, in terms of support and advice…we go through quite a long scoping period with each project to really interrogate what the idea is; how that idea is going to reach an audience; how that audience will know that that experience is for them; how you can begin to really dig into evaluating how the audience is reacting to that content.

Because we’ve become, within the digital world, very focused on numbers, on users, maybe a little bit on duration and stay time. But really, in the end, what we are interested to find out is, how did that make an audience member feel? Did that achieve something for you as an artist in terms of what the stories you want to tell and how that audience interacted with it? Even if that’s 10 people on top of a mountain, if that’s the experience you wanted to give them, and they loved it, and it’s life changing, that’s fine! It’s about the nature of the experience and how people react to it.

Niamh White (Hospital Rooms) and Clare Savory (Podcast Producer)

Clare Savory 0:03

What impact has working with The Space had for you Niamh?

Niamh White 0:05

At Hospital Rooms, we’ve worked with The Space for a really long time. They offered us some initial support back in about 2018, at which point, we were running in person projects within inpatient mental health wards. We were bringing artists in. We were having these amazing, magical experiences, creating artworks and transforming environments, but they were only ever encountered by very, very few people. When we saw a grant round from The Space, it was really talking about storytelling, it was talking about reach, it was talking about digital expansion.

And we just kind of, you know, made our application, and we were successful, and we were able to make five really beautiful films that illuminated the experiences of a number of artists that we work with, of a number of patients who have been involved with projects, and really tell the story of why Hospital Rooms exist and the impact that it has. We also had some support on how to share those films, how to make sure they got out in the world and they were seen by lots and lots of people. And really it was the start of us getting a new kind of visibility. From there, The Space have offered you, know, help on the end of the phone intermittently, as we have expanded and changed and developed. And we now run our Digital Art School, which is a core element of our programme. So The Space were really there with us at the very beginning, and we’re so, so grateful to them.

Clare Savory 1:50

Brilliant. For anyone who’s looking at taking first steps to work with The Space, any advice for them?

Niamh White 1:58

The Space are so fantastic at meeting you where you are. So be completely open and honest about the capability that you already have, your aspirations for what you want to learn and what you want to achieve, they’ll find the right people for you. They’ll find the right expertise. They’ll guide you in the right direction and set you on the right path. So I would say, just go for it, speak to them, and they will set you on the right way.

Carly McConnell (Open Clasp) and Clare Savory (Podcast Producer)

Clare Savory 0:00

What was it like when you first connected with The Space? What did you get out of that relationship?

Carly McConnell 0:06

Well first of all, being commissioned by The Space was huge. Writing that application for the organisation, it was big, we’d just kind of come back from New York, and there was a real need for the show to continue. And everyone was talking about how no matter where we were in America, or in Edinburgh, in the Northeast, everyone’s going, ‘it’s the same, it’s the same issues. Globally, we’re sharing the same stories and same experiences within the criminal justice system.’

So connecting with The Space and getting The Space commission was like just opening so many doors for us and connecting us into a world that we had no idea existed, in a way, you know? Like having the BBC come with their massive trucks and all these cameras and and crews, and it was just an incredible experience, you know? And then from there into the distribution and how to connect like absolutely invaluable mentoring, invaluable.

But also huge respect, you know, there was an understanding that we are really good at what we do in creating theatre and supporting us to get there, but really listening. Not going, ‘this is the instruction manual, and you have to follow it.’ You know what I mean, like a real conversation between what’s going to work for us and what won’t work for us. You know? Sohonesty, invaluable mentoring and shared partnership and learning really.

Clare Savory 1:42

If there are people listening to this and they are, well, let’s say they’re a theatre company. They’re theater makers, directors who are looking at taking those first steps into the digital world. What advice would you have for them?

Carly McConnell 1:59

Ask questions, be brave and collaborate. Collaborating is so key, you know, like bring everybody around you and bring everybody into the conversation. Bring your creative team, bring your set designer, your writing designer, your stage manager, your ASM, right in at the beginning. Because those are the decisions that you make as an organisation when you’re wanting to go from live to digital, impacts their role, and you need them on board for it to be a success as well. And also listen to your co-creators, to your people around you really know who your audience are and what your call to action is, Be ambitious and go for it.

Clare Savory 2:50

Yeah. And for those people who have never worked with The Space before, what would you say to some of those who might be listening?

Carly McConnell 2:59

I would say, reach out. Watch the webinars on YouTube…. learn, soak up. There’s so many resources that The Space have. Go through it, read it, and then don’t be afraid to reach out. If you have a specific question or a specific need that you can’t find through the resource pack, or the information on the website, or on YouTube videos, or on podcasts, like just drop an email, lift up the phone. They’re a lovely bunch of folks.

Clare Savory 3:34

That’s a nice way to round this up. They’re a lovely bunch of folks. They are indeed!

Paul Long (MBD)

I think the main thing that I get from working with The Space is that they are not afraid to take a risk, and that they will support us in the kind of research and development of the organisation and the projects that we do. So I could pick out, of the projects that have been supported by The Space, you’ve got things like ‘Atom and Luna,’ which was really the first time that we got our hands dirty with augmented reality. ‘Heritage Stories,’ which was about walk around virtual reality experiences and ‘Voyagers’ which was about learning the ropes of virtual production.

In all of those cases, they were relatively small projects on their own, but what they unlocked has been so massive. You know, for MBD, we’ve been able to take those skills forward and build on that as an organisation, as a business, and yep – they are just such a supportive organisation who are unafraid to take those risky projects on, that others maybe wouldn’t.

The great thing about The Space is that they straddle these kind of different parts of the industry, and they’re able to put you in touch with people who can just help unlock areas that you maybe wouldn’t normally have thought of. So for ‘Voyagers,’ for example, we were working in virtual production, so we worked with somebody to look at how we could, you know, actually reach into that kind of film industry and try and get in touch with more kind of TV contacts and things like that. Just to be able to not just take the learning from the project, but be able to build on it once we came out the other end.