Live Audience Accessibility & Augmentation (‘LAAA’) Project(s) CHEAD Presentation 2025

Bossey, Adrian ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9874-6323 (2025) Live Audience Accessibility & Augmentation (‘LAAA’) Project(s) CHEAD Presentation 2025. In: CHEAD Innovations in Practice Event, 26th February 2025, online.

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Abstract / Summary

The LAAA project(s) explored music festival audience’s perceptions of liveness, haptic dancefloors and haptic vests regarding accessibility, disability and neurodivergence.

The 16 million people who are d/Deaf, disabled or neurodiverse in the UK face challenges accessing live music events. Some mitigation may be provided by haptic technologies, which transform sound into felt vibration, by generating experiences that feel authentically ‘live’.

Four LAAA projects evaluated audience experiences of ‘live’ music performances, augmented with haptic technology while facilitating learning, knowledge exchange and outreach activity. The first LAAA events installed the BEAT BLOCKS haptic dancefloor and programmed DEAF RAVE DJ workshops to school groups including The Deaf Academy in May 2023. LAAA2F field tested haptic vests, at Boomtown Fair and the Deaf Rave Festival in 2023. LAAA2BB measured audience and policy maker perceptions of the haptic dancefloor, with colleagues from the University of Brighton, at Cheltenham Jazz Festival, Meltdown Festival and Tropical Pressure in 2024. LAAA2BB co-convened the Access to Music Conference, at Cheltenham Jazz Festival. LAAA3 delivered knowledge exchange and included Bellatrix performing with a haptic floor tile on stage. Multiple partners included: Beat Blocks, Deaf Rave, Attitude is Everything, providing in-conversation speakers and Cheltenham Festival Ltd, producing Access to Music Conference.

Nineteen Student Research Assistant roles, supported field tests by collecting data and facilitating research activities. Student feedback was excellent, evidencing benefits from experiential, research-based learning, including developing employability skills and social capital. The surveys built on previous work in: Do you think ICT enhanced performances are really ‘live’ music? Ten student performers gained experience of performing to public audiences while over two hundred student audience members experienced the haptic technologies.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Other)
Subjects:	Business > Experience Design Business > Leisure & Tourism Business > Management
Courses by Department:	Cornwall Business School
Depositing User:	Adrian Bossey
Date Deposited:	05 Mar 2025 11:18
Last Modified:	05 Mar 2025 11:18
URI:	https://repository.falmouth.ac.uk/id/eprint/5930

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