Co-creation

Sunday 26 July 2009

By the end of the AMA conference this week none of us were in any doubt that ‘co-creation’ is the way to go. Inviting audience members and visitors to put forward their suggestions for programming, to join us in making art or simply to get behind the scenes of our world and help us spread the word. We heard from Innocent Smoothies about the customer who insisted in getting hats knitted for the bottles – and raised loads for Age Concern. You Tube took us through the highs and lows of getting the first internet symphony out into the world. The Watershed in Bristol showed some of the films their users made, spontaneously, that contributed to the complete change round of this very rooted organisation. And the Hallé told us how playing a very ‘difficult’ piece of music twice through, with the audience invited at the repeat to come up on stage to see how the musicians did it, has led to requests for many more ‘difficult’ concerts!

We came away from the conference amused, inspired, thoughtful, envious and with many germs of ideas for opening up our work to our audiences.