We’ve Been Here

This version of 'We've Been Here' was shared in 2025/2026 as an immersive audio experience exploring political conflict through a lens of an older woman’s lived experience. Centred on the voice of a grandmother who escaped Franco's Spain, the piece reflects on personal encounter with war, the psychological and systemic cycle that sustains it, and the intergenerational potential for resistance and reimagining.
Rooted in a two-year research process involving a steering group of seven grandmothers, this work combines verbatim text and innovative sound design to create an audio sensory experience for audiences. It invites reflection on war not as a distant or abstract event, but as a recurring pattern with emotional, moral, and physical implications that continue to impact lives in the present.
The project aims to foreground underrepresented perspectives, specifically older women often overlooked in cultural discourse, drawing inspiration from global activist movements such as Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, Raging Grannies and Granny Peace Brigade. These grandmothers, positioned both as survivors and as cultural witnesses, offer insight into cycles of violence, resilience, care, and action.
The aim is to develop this work into a large scale multi-layered immersive participatory performance involving live performance, movement, immersive sound and creative captioning, combining personal testimonies of grandmothers with geopolitical narratives. The piece will explore conflict experiences in living memory, not as a warning designed to instil fear, but as a prompt for listening, understanding, and imagining change.
The work informs ongoing research on intersection between participatory (auto)biographical performance, digital technology and empathy, while investigating dramaturgical strategies used within such work.
Its finding until now informed my seminar presentation at ESSE2026 Conference in Santiago de Compostela.

Over the years ‘We’ve Been Here’ had been supported by Arts Council England, Immersive Business Lab Falmouth University, Real Ideas Organisation through Women in Immersive Tech programme, Feast Cornwall, Creative UK, Hall For Cornwall, Paul Village Hall, Solomon Browne Memorial Hall in Mousehole, Screen Cornwall and Creative Kernow via Immersive Innovation Programme 2025/2026, Centre for Blended Realties through my E3 Research Secondment and AMATA at Falmouth University.