Collaborate project spotlight
Find out more about the research project between Big Telly Theatre Company and a research team from Manchester School of Theatre, Manchester Metropolitan University and the Centre of Deliberative Research at the National Centre of Social Research.
Granny Jackson’s Dead
Research partnership:
Big Telly Theatre Company with Michael Pinchbeck, Josh Edelman and Kirsty Fairclough from Manchester Metropolitan University and Eleanor O’Keeffe from the Centre of Deliberative Research at the National Centre of Social Research
Research focus:
Commemoration, mourning, performance and the digital – exploring how we can use immersive theatre to look afresh at “arts-led dialogue”.
This partnership was awarded a research grant in June 2023 as part of the second round of the Centre for Cultural Value’s Collaborate programme.
The fund supported innovative new partnerships between cultural sector practitioners and academics to explore under-explored questions around cultural value.
What did the project explore?
Northern Ireland-based Big Telly Theatre Company partnered with researchers from Manchester Metropolitan University and the National Centre of Social Research to explore how to use immersive theatre to look afresh at “arts-led dialogue”.
Big Telly’s creative practitioners and their academic partners, digital artists and deliberative practitioners focused on how theatre enables us to consider the psychological and social effects of digitising memory and memorialisation.
Together they created an immersive theatre performance called Granny Jackson’s Dead that explored what grief technology might do if we let it into our lives. It questioned if we can or should use technology in a healthy way to help us mourn and remember. It also looked at how immersive theatre can be used to bring people together to debate and respond to important questions.
The project aims to demonstrate theatre’s cultural value in generating robust, consensual evidence to address societal challenges and enable oversight of technology.
Read an MMU blog about the development of Granny Jackson’s Dead
Project learning and findings
Granny Jackson’s Dead: exploring grief, memory, commemoration and technology
