We've added a few fresh faces to the Co-creation and Participation team since last we all spoke, so let's get to the Who, What, Where, Why and How of them all...
Introducing....
- Carly Henderson, Senior Consultant, Co-creation and Participation
- Natelle Morgan-Brown, Consultant, Co-creation and Participation
- Nicky Hatton, Senior Consultant, Participatory Practice, Co-creation and Evaluation
Carly HendersonSenior Consultant, Co-creation and Participation |
"Evaluation can be extractive whereas co-created evaluation enables a power shift. Engaging participants directly in data collection or inviting them to reflect on your findings brings a different lens and useful, critical challenge to the project"
Q. WHO are you?
A. Hello, I’m Carly, a Lancashire based theatre practitioner/researcher who works in arts, youth and education settings. I’ve been a facilitator for over 15 years and feel most at home in a school hall surrounded by 10-year-olds and makeshift props. I’m passionate about cultural democracy and helping organisations rethink their approaches to engaging traditionally underserved communities. I’m a trustee for Roma-led charity Kaskosan and for the National Festival of Making. I get a great deal of inspiration from working with these organisations which bring together my interests in community development and the principles of craft and making.
Q. WHAT is your role at The Audience Agency?
A. I’m a senior consultant specialising in co-creation and participation. I work with a range of organisations to support their community engagement practices, often evaluating projects with participants to understand their experiences of participating in their terms, through methods that are accessible, creative and inclusive. I also enjoy working with clients to help them reflect on their practices and unlock new areas of thinking – those ‘aha’ moments or the knots that often tell us so much.
I’ve just come off the back of leading the evaluation for Critical Mass, an inclusive dance mass participation project delivered as part of Birmingham 2022 Festival and compiling a Playbook of learning for the project. I’m in the final phase of evaluating Our Shared Cultural Heritage, a youth led project delivered by British Council, Manchester Museum and Glasgow Life that explores the shared histories and cultures of the UK. and South Asia. I manage a group of young evaluators as part of the project, who are incredibly skilled and who often ask big questions. I’ve learned a lot from hearing their perspectives and delve into this further in my blog.
Q. WHERE did you join us from?
A. I worked across Merseyside as a theatre practitioner for 6 years for organisaitons such as the Liverpool Royal Court Theatre and the Comedy Trust before joining the Learning and Engagement Team at Oldham Coliseum Theatre. I was fortunate enough to lead the team there until 2021, before I joined the Audience Agency. The Coliseum has since sadly closed, but at the time, I thoroughly enjoyed being embedded in Oldham’s communities and worked with some incredibly passionate community partners who really challenged and shaped my thinking about what engagement should and could mean, particularly working in the town through austerity.
Q. WHEN did you start working with us?
A. I started working for TAA in November 2021. I’d been on maternity leave through covid so initially found remote working a challenge. Pleased to say I can now log onto zoom, cat face filter free.
Q. WHY did you choose to join The Audience Agency?
A. I completed a PhD whilst at the Coliseum exploring how young people engaged with the theatre as a place, and its practices. To provide understandings of this, in young people’s terms, I developed a methodology that incorporated and analysed the experiences of eight young co-researchers using photography and photo elicitation. This practice-based research inspired me to think more deeply about how we engage communities in research and evaluation. My role at the Audience Agency brings together my interests and experiences – it provided an exciting next step. I was also drawn to the prospect of working with a range of organisations across the arts, culture and heritage sector and working alongside consultants and researchers with different specialisms.
Q. HOW do the principles of co-creation apply to evaluation?
A. Co-created evaluation is a messy practice - and so it should be. Donald Schon’s metaphor about the ‘swampy, messy lowlands’ containing ‘important problems' is useful here. Evaluation can be extractive whereas co-created evaluation enables a power shift. Engaging participants directly in data collection or inviting them to reflect on your findings brings a different lens and useful, critical challenge to the project. It can helpfully allow the project team and evaluator to descend into the ‘swampy lowlands’ and grapple with the knots, which are often the most interesting and revealing findings.
Natelle Morgan-BrownConsultant, Co-creation and Participation |
"The basics of co-creation should be weaved like a steel thread through creative and cultural activities, from planning to delivery through to evaluation and development. Build it alone and it might be good. But build it together and it’ll probably be great!"
Q. WHO are you?
A. Hey there, or Eyup as we say in Nottingham!
I’m Natelle (pronounced Nat-Elle) Morgan-Brown and I recently joined The Audience Agency (TAA) as a Consultant. I’m convinced about the possibilities to connect through art and culture. I believe in using creativity as a tool for community development and power shifting. I think of myself as a Creative Facilitator. A Gatherer. A Sharer, a Connector and a Questioner. In addition to this innate sense of curiosity, I draw on personal and lived experiences of feeling/being excluded, othered or unwelcome into spaces, in order to help explore, reflect and remove barriers to engagement.
Q. WHAT is your role at The Audience Agency?
A. In a nutshell I work alongside arts, heritage and cultural organisations supporting them to assess and develop their audience offer. My area of focus is anchored in co-creation and participation, particularly working alongside young people, groups or individuals in Global (Ethnic) Majority communities who’ve too long been underserved and underrepresented, as well as those who might identify as “working class”.
Q. WHERE did you join us from?
A. As the first in my immediate family to go to University, I studied Contemporary, Performance and Live Art over 20 years ago. Since then, I’ve had the pleasure of working alongside many different partners including small grassroots Community Interest Companies in their infancy yet driven by passion, the UK Parliament exploring the impacts of race relations legislation with people from the Caribbean Diaspora, as well as Critical Friends as hard won, honest and trusted venue ambassadors. Before this role, I enjoyed six years managing the Community Programme at Nottingham Contemporary – a large visual arts NPO (National Portfolio Organisation) in the city centre of my hometown – and spent time as a Resident Development Officer working on Ending Youth Violence strategies with the city council.
In addition to these roles, I’m a Trustee with Nottingham Refugee Week - an internationally recognised arts and culture festival celebrating the contributions, creativity and resilience of people seeking refuge and sanctuary – and for Gedling Youth and Community Hub – a small community-integrated charity operating from a historic former railway station.
Q. WHEN did you start working with us?
A. After years juggling what some might call a ‘portfolio career’ mostly working in museums, galleries and local authority, I came to The Audience Agency in April 2023. I bring my fresh eyes, an assorted background and varied skillset built in between the spaces of Youth, Community and Civic Engagement.
Q. WHY did you choose to join The Audience Agency?
A. At TAA I'm looking forward to supporting, sharing, and learning with organisations who’re committed to listening to and understanding their community audiences. Internally within TAA I'm also keen to develop and share knowledge of action-based Access and Anti-Racism strategies to ensure our practices align with our mission and vision. Our team have just begun work on a new project with UNESCO World Heritage Sites, Global Geoparks and Biosphere Reserves across the UK which is an exciting place to start...
Q. HOW do the principles of co-creation apply to evaluation?
A. Despite the old saying “never work with animals or children,” working with Young People has taught me the opposite. Young people are not easily won over, so it takes perseverance, understanding and the ability to meet Young People where they are, mentally and physically, to build relationships based on trust. This is similar to the way I approach community engagement. Of course, ‘young people’ and ‘communities’ aren’t a homogenous group but I generally find that, once you get the basics of engagement right, people are often able to be more candid, fearless and willing to take risks offering up perspectives in ways they otherwise wouldn’t or couldn’t.
In a recent conference around the topic of co-creation, someone quoted the founder of Fun Palaces as saying “The (community) relationship is the project, not the production, show or exhibition” (or words to that effect!). This ‘relationship centred practice’ shows up by being less transactional and more relational; an approach I wholly subscribe to. As professionals we must (*clap*) talk (*clap*) to (*clap*) people. Read the room. Share the power. Get a deep understanding of what current and potential audiences/visitors want, need and think before responding or offering up preplanned “solutions”. These basics of enabling co-creation should be weaved like a steel thread through creative and cultural activities, from planning to delivery through to evaluation and development. Build it alone and it might be good. But build it together and it’ll probably be great!
Nicky HattonSenior Consultant, Participatory Practice, Co-creation and Evaluation |
"There are a lot of principles and interesting models for co-creation in the arts, but it can feel difficult to translate these principles into evaluation practice. Every community and project is different and there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach."
Q. WHO are you?
A. Hi, I’m Nicky, a Bradford-based theatre practitioner and consultant who works across the arts, health, heritage and education sectors. I trained as a community theatre practitioner and spent a lot of time making performance in health settings, including hospitals and care homes. I’m interested in how people learn and participate in different ways, and how cultural organisations – such as theatres, galleries and museums - can work more equitably with the communities on their doorsteps.
Q. WHAT is your role at The Audience Agency?
A. I work as a senior evaluation consultant who specialises in community engagement. I typically work with cultural organisations who are interested in collaborating and creating with local communities. I often use creative approaches to support people to participate in research and evaluation. Recent/current projects that I’ve worked on include Art Fund’s The Wild Escape programme which aims to re-connect museums with primary-aged children, the RHS’ Digital Dig programme, and TAA’s Digitally Democratising Archives programme, which explored whether digital technology can bring communities and archives closer together.
Q. WHERE did you join us from?
A. I joined TAA from York St John University where I was a lecturer in community theatre and performance. Alongside teaching performance in the studio, a big part of my role was supporting students to facilitate theatre projects in a range of community settings, including schools, care homes and prisons. I also conducted participatory research in health settings and completed a PhD about the creative role of artists in dementia care settings.
Before working for a university, I was a Creative Learning Practitioner at Hampstead Theatre and Arcola Theatre in London, where I worked with schools, youth theatres, hospitals, and other community groups. It was through these roles that I developed a passion for arts and health, and started to explore the possibilities of theatre and performance a range of care settings.
Q. WHEN did you start working with us?
A. I joined TAA in September 2021. The last 2 years have gone very quickly and I’m enjoying working on a really broad range of projects from heritage to health and place-based arts programmes.
Q. WHY did you choose to join The Audience Agency?
A. I loved working for a university, but didn’t always feel like I was involved in research that could have an impact in the ‘real world’. TAA’s belief that arts and culture can improve people’s lives felt closely aligned with my own values and it felt like an important moment to support participatory arts as the world emerged from Covid. I also felt it would be an opportunity to bring together some of my different skills and experiences, including research, facilitation and working with communities.
I’m lucky that my role is very varied with lots of opportunity to grow and learn. The best thing about this job is that every project is different. I enjoy the challenges that come with the different parts of the role, and the opportunity to learn from our clients and participants, as well as our very experienced team of consultants and researchers.
Q. HOW do the principles of co-creation apply to evaluation?
A. Co-creation feels really important to the evaluation work we do at TAA but it’s not something that we are always successful at. There are a lot of principles and interesting models for co-creation in the arts, but it can feel difficult to translate these principles into evaluation practice. Every community and project is different and there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach. I do find that there are certain stages of an evaluation process which perhaps lend themselves more easily to co-design. For example, through an evaluation framework co-design workshop, which is an opportunity for everyone involved to say what matters to them and shape the direction of the evaluation.
However, these sessions can of course be complicated by power dynamics and the relationships between the people in the room. We also know that meaningful collaboration takes time, effort and work: to build trust, to get to know people and to understand their needs. This can feel like a challenge if the evaluator is not with the project from the beginning, but I think the intention to try is important, even if we are not always successful. Asking the question ‘how would you like to be involved?’ can be a good starting point, and there is always the opportunity to learn from communities about how we can do it better next time.