Disconnected Bodies
Experts in Innovative Arts Marketing. Audience Engagement & Psychology Consultants.
“Art without discovery moves nobody; creation must be made accessible for consumption”.
Arts audience engagement consultants for independent artists, arts organisations and artist-run initiatives.
Leading arts audience engagement consultants that support cultural clients with the audience challenges they’re facing.
Advice, research and engagement planning support tailored to meet the requirements of both independent artists and arts organisations of all sizes, either through the completion of full engagement planning documents or by strengthening grant applications with public engagement insights.
As innovators within the culture industry, we align audience psychologies to provide more relevant engagement guidance – to effectively reach and connect with your audience; informing the building of cultural experiences so the public receive maximum value from your work.
Our Work and Arts Council England
Disconnected Bodies provide ACE Access Support and have been previous Suppliers with ACE.
Working to ACE strategies and objectives, we align a client’s programme to ensure their public value is being demonstrated clearly.
We have a comprehensive understanding of ACE Project Grants and can contribute our expertise to strengthen applications.
We offer suggestions as to where a project’s public engagement planning is falling short and how best to move forward.
Our goal is to enable more people to participate in exciting and brilliant cultural experiences, where, in many cases, the first step to achieving this is through funding being secured.
The London Borough of Culture
Disconnected Bodies Director and Lead Consultant Pablo Colella hosts the ‘This is Croydon’ podcast.
This year-long community-led cultural programme showcases the best of Croydon culture from across the borough to the rest of London. Cutting-edge music, dance, theatre, heritage and art.
Available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
“Culture for all Londoners is the Mayor’s landmark strategy for culture. It outlines an ambitious vision, which aims to provide Londoners with access to culture on their doorsteps”. London.gov.uk
Working closely with the Mayor’s office, we contribute our expertise to this vision, providing our innovative Sandbox toolkit as a structure that’ll allow these access goals to become reality.
Our Work with Arts Audience Insights CIC
Research into arts audiences is crucial to support the industry moving forward. We pride ourselves on our knowledge of contemporary arts audiences, their changing habits and the means of connecting with them. We work alongside arts audience R&D CIC, Arts Audience Insights to widen access for traditionally unengaged, underrepresented or discriminated groups. Key findings from our research can be read here.
Our current research –
- Mapping ‘The Hidden’: A national investigation to identify ‘hidden’ audiences – the many niche, underrepresented, under-engaged and discriminated-against people being overlooked in current nationwide arts audience research, policies and long-term strategies.
Moving beyond dead-end data.
It’s a dangerous, ineffective and impersonal approach to be developing cultural experiences based upon census-style data and not recognising audiences as individuals. We cannot, after all, influence an individual’s socio-demographic characteristics.
Grouping audiences solely through demographic data is not only extremely presumptuous of their psychographics but also boarders on prejudice and discrimination.
Allowing the future of the arts to be shaped through such a cold, analytical approach fills us with dread.
Read more
Data-only based research leads to limited pictures of stereotypes and habitual behaviours that don’t reveal the narratives, hopes and dreams, and challenges that form the human experience and are so important to the appreciation of arts.
Currently available guidance over simplifies the process an individual goes through in deciding to participate in the arts. Failing to take into account that the process involves more than one decision and that different factors determine the outcomes of each decision.
“There should be a disdain for reducing audiences’ emotional response to relatively meaningless graphics. [It’s] the age-old adage that anything can be proven with statistics.”
Disconnected Bodies’ Audience Sandbox
Sandbox is our set of industry-leading frameworks and models designed to provide a complete understanding of arts audience psychology and engagement.
Sandbox’s value lies in the ability to simplify the complex dynamics of arts engagement, allowing cultural organisations to better influence engagement behaviour through the use of the most comprehensive audience profiling available and a fresh approach to an audience’s participation journey.
Developed from collaborations with psychologists, sociologists, arts professionals and over three thousand audience interactions, Sandbox is genuinely becoming a game changer for the wider cultural sector, and is only available via Disconnected Bodies.
We Dive Deeper
Here’s 25% of the contents of our Sandbox – with 112 frameworks, models and engagement flowcharts available in total. (We’ve kept the best to ourselves. Naughty people in the past have tried passing our approach off as theirs… tut!)
For the full list and how the Sandbox can be customised for your audience work, please arrange a free call where we’ll be happy to talk you through what the Sandbox has to offer.
- Baseline Psychology
- Thinking Preference and Process
- Motivations
- Motivation Direction
- Cultural Baseline
- Visible Culture
- Invisible Culture
- Ethnocentricity
- Intercultural Competence
- Psychological Foundations of a Culture
- Stigma and Group Inequality
- Barriers
- Practical, technical, cultural, situational, personal, attitudinal and perceptual.
- Decision Making
- Speed
- Planning Style
- Influence Preference
- Stimuli
- Artistic Exchange
- Engagement Pathway
- Engagement Direction
- Entry Point
- Gamification
- Importance of Modelling
- Psychology of Meaning
- Small Group Psychology
- Post-Engagement
- Selective Remembering
- Misremembering
Where Others Fall Short
- Oversimplifies the process audiences go through when deciding to participate.
- Is limited to a set number of segments with very fixed profiling – how can 67 million people fit into a handful of predefined segments?
- Fails to consider the engagement process involves more than one decision and that different factors determine the outcomes of each decision.
- Arts organisations are not provided with enough correct information to determine what strategies may be appropriate and when to use them.
- Doesn’t consider the complete audience journey including artistic exchange or post-engagement impact.
- Over reliance on an audience’s socio-demographics rather than their personal, situational, cultural, institutional and historical factors; not providing the practical guidance needed to influence engagement behaviour.
“Relying on fixed audience segmentation – the round hole that you’re trying to fit your square peg – doesn’t make sense. Rather, determine your own audience sets that are relevant to your work and from which organisation-specific approaches can be determined.
After all, how can 67 million people fit into a handful of pre-defined categories?”.
Our Services.
Using our game changing approach to arts engagement, we support clients with the audience challenges they’re facing through overarching audience advice and practical arts engagement or marketing planning support that identifies, explores, understand and plans to reach an audience.
We formalise the vision of the relation clients want to cultivate with their audience, including specific roles for the audience and themselves.
Our range of customisable audience solutions have been designed to meet the requirements of both independent artists and arts organisations of all sizes, including the meeting of ACE Project Grant and NPO engagement criteria.
AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT CONSULTANCY CLINIC
A straightforward conversation that takes the uncertainty out of audience engagement and supports you to identify, explore, understand or reach your intended audience.
We look to provide individualised advise on the audience participation issues you’re facing as either an independent artist or arts organisation.
AUDIENCE PROFILING
A structured overview document that provides you an accessible introduction to audience identification and planning. Designed to be user-friendly, the document is easily understood and is the ideal first step in ensuring a project reaches its intended audience.
Audience profiling sets the foundation for effective implementation of engagement planning and allows for projects with limited resources, including staffing and budget, to achieve the audience reach and depth of experience they aspire to.
AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT ROAD MAP
Providing medium to large organisations with arts marketing and audience engagement strategic documentation that formally organises the identification and exploration of intended audiences.
The development of a Road Map is a straightforward process that encourages a wider vision of participation, clarifies audience objectives and provides an actionable plan that takes the uncertainty out of audience engagement.
Road Maps are intended as a long-range reference document for the situational analysis and initial research/data collection elements whilst also offering individualised and actionable engagement strategies alongside monitoring planning.
- Support strategies for change.
- Encourage artistic and financial stakeholders, including funders.
- Demonstrate commitment to access/inclusion and artistic value.
- Develop or deepen your audience on limited resources.
- Support funding bids.
Our Audience Engagement Road Maps are the gold standard in audience engagement planning, taking full advantage of our industry-leading Sandbox tools.
ARTS GRANT SUPPORT
Our arts grant support options have been tailored for both large and small scale funding; having been designed around Arts Council England Project Grants, Culture Recovery and DYCP requirements or similar. For those who have yet to submit an application and for those who have had an application rejected.
We aim to communicate the strength and value of your application through clear expression of your vision and worth, whilst also encouraging and reassuring funders by meeting the wider cultural and equality goals set by that funder.
ARTS GRANT Support CLINIC
Best for one-off or short-term support for DYCP applications or similar.
A personalised conversation that clarifies the grant application process and provides actionable advice to take the uncertainty out of arts funding for independent artists.
Communicate your deservingness through artistic vision and demonstrate how your application will fulfil the goals of Arts Council England and benefit the public at some point in the future.
£30/hour incl. VAT
- Bookable in slots of 1 hour.
- Free 30-minute video consultation beforehand. To prepare material for the clinic session.
FOR REJECTED PROJECT GRANTS –
PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT STRENGTHENING
Section re-write and supporting documentation to strengthen project grant applications that have been rejected due to public engagement sections being ‘comparatively weaker’.
From our experience many applications are being rejected due to public engagement sections being comparatively weaker. In order to address this weaker link and allow for the application to be re-submitted in a stronger position we’ve developed our Public Engagement Strengthening offer.
Designed as a hassle free option, you’re provided with a full supporting document outlining those audiences you wish to reach, how you’ll go about doing this, the value they’ll receive from your work and the experience you intend for them to have.
In addition, we offer a full re-write of the public engagement section of your application, written in such a way that overcomes the challenge of conveying a project’s public value within the tight character limit. Both the re-write and supporting document clearly address ACE’s feedback and their wider audience engagement targets.
Read what ACE have to say on the importance of understanding audiences for grant applications. HERE.
FOR NEW PROJECTS-
AUDIENCE PROFILING FOR PROJECT GRANT
A structured overview that provides you an accessible introduction to audience identification and planning to be used as supporting documentation for project grants of up to £100,000.
Designed to be user-friendly, the document is easily understood and is the ideal first step in ensuring an application demonstrates a project’s public value and its meeting of ACE public engagement objectives whilst comprehensively outlining the engagement approach you’ll take to reach your intended audience.
bespoke Audience Research
Observational and participatory dialogues and ‘deep hanging out’ through an immersion of ourselves within your culture. We strive to capture, illustrate and interpret the value and impact of your audience’s experience through the use of our Sandbox frameworks in addition to existing data from a number of regional and national desk-based sources.
audience voice workshops
Run in collaboration with an organisation, Audience Voice sessions are led by Disconnected Bodies and are highly adaptable for many desired outcomes, providing the ability to gain insight within a short timeframe.
Suitable when needing to deepen the understanding of specific audience groups such as reaching unconfident, reluctant or ‘newcomer’ audiences.
Following our Sandbox frameworks and modeling, we have designed an informal session for participants, but one that’s intense in its collection of data. Through reliably structured observational and participatory dialogues and ‘deep hanging out’, the outcome is a robust set of findings that cover a audience’s complete engagement journey from baseline psychology to post-engagement impact.
Funding Partners
We are actively seeking funding partners to collaborate with on projects that increase access to the arts to under-represented audiences.
We hope to contribute our expertise to projects that otherwise would be lacking a structured approach to audience engagement or that wouldn’t meet the ACE funding eligibility requirements; whilst advancing our research portfolio.
Bid Writers & Access Support
Navigating arts and cultural funding bids can be complicated and demanding. With over a decade of experience as independent consultants, we excel in evaluating and nurturing cultural and creative initiatives to craft compelling bids within the arts and cultural sector.
Working with Arts Council England, we have over 15 years of invaluable expertise collaborating with leading arts venues nationwide and independent artists.
Book a Free 30-Minute Video Consultation.
A complimentary chat to discuss your requirements or any current engagement sticking points you may be facing.
We’re happy to provide free guidance that may resolve your questions within the half hour, or discuss how we can work together longer term.
