Field with Peter L. Dixon Design

The Performance Ensemble is a Leeds-based theatre company for the over 60s, providing a community and a voice to those who might feel marginalised. The group aims to bring together people from a range of backgrounds, occupying the space between professional, amateur and community theatre, and draws on the life experiences of its members, whilst creating new shared experiences.

1001 Stories comes from the folk tales of 1001 Nights, in which the protagonist Scheherazade – in order to stay alive – had to tell the monarch Shahryar one thousand stories. Every night, she told a new story, and every morning the monarch spared her life. These were stories of survival that kept Scheherazade going, and the monarch entertained. It’s this analogy of stories of survival that 1001 Stories: Radical Acts of Being Human orbits around.

You can read more about Scheherazade here.

In April 2023, as part of Leeds 2023 Year of Culture, Field partnered with The Performance Ensemble and Leeds Playhouse to produce 1001 Stories: Radical Acts of Being Human – an immersive exhibition space telling the stories of hundreds of Leeds residents, and a digital archive that will live on long after exhibition.

Field were responsible for all the interlinking threads of this project including;

Running early workshops on how these stories were going to manifest

Naming the experience, taking into account other 1001 Stories off-shoot projects

The visitor experience: spatial design, immersive experience, brand identity, archival website (design and build)

The exhibition encompassed all aspects of the project into a three-dimensional immersive experience. The space invited visitors in, and as they made their way to the Bramall Rock Void, an underground theatre within the Playhouse, the effects of the experience intensified. The audience experienced fragments and glimpses of the 1001 Stories, with the context and richness of the stories intensifying as you entered the Rock Void to a sensitive crescendo of overlapping narratives. Delivered as a fully immersive, audio visual experience, using theater lighting, graphics, an explosive typographic sculpture at the epicentre, this installation created a canvas and disruptive surface to break apart the typographic projections.

The Archive

The website aspect of the project is a self-contained experience that celebrates the stories in more detail, acting as a platform to host 1001 individual anecdotes and tales. The development of the digital archive allowed for chance encounters, whilst still maintaining a taxonomic approach to the structure and themes surrounding the individual stories. Accessibility – especially surrounding visual or motor skills – was particularly important when designing the website, due to the target audience and broad demographic of potential users. This led to a two threaded approach to the navigation of the digital archive: one would focus on an exploratory experience, encouraging the user to look around a space, reminiscent of the physical space of the exhibition and to find their way through themes to a curated selection of stories; the other would present all 1001 stories (and beyond) in a more traditional text format.

The digital performance was attended by an estimated 400 visitors, based on general footfall throughout the Playhouse over the duration of the event. The archive lives on as a living document of the stories of the people of Leeds and acts as a testament to the vibrancy and optimism within the over 60s population of the great city of Leeds.

The project was supported by the following partners: Leeds Inspired Leeds 2023 Leeds Museums and Galleries National Lottery Community Fund National Lottery Heritage Fund Hong Kong Arts Development Council British Council Leeds Older People’s Forum Leeds City Council Arts Council England