Revelland presents Go Beyond, a series of educational videos providing artists with the skills, expertise and inspiration to add sensory effects to their live shows – making their performances more immersive and engaging for everyone who has paid to come and see them. The idea of adding extrasensory experiences came from addressing various disabilities, but the impact improves the experience for everyone attending the show. Revelland is a new collaborative network that aims to make live music more accessible through immersive experiences.
Revelland comes on the back of Sencity Festival, a multi-sensory music festival that’s travelled the globe with 70 events and counting. The source of the success: to use the limitation as a source of inspiration. By approaching live music from the perspective of people who can’t hear and drawing inspiration from this limitation, Sencity explored and developed multi-sensory effects to increase the emotions that are within the music. As a result, 20 years of experience is now merged into a European network of passionate artists, directors and event organisers, focused on empowering artists to transform their live performances into an immersive, accessible experience on a limited budget.
The creative processes of and insights of sense specialists and experience designers such as Adam Thomason (Flavour&Some), Sarah McCartney (4160 Tuesdays), Stephanie Singer (BitterSuite) and KNARS, KRANKk and Perhaps Contraption have now been captured in the Go Beyond video series. This video toolkit, consisting of six episodes, gives aspiring artists a first taste of how to create multi-sensory immersive live performances. The video series is available on DiscoverRevelland.today/Go-Beyond/.
Ronald Ligtenberg, founder of Sencity Festival and CEO of Possibilize, said:
“Revelland’s goal is to make performing arts accessible to everyone by developing immersive live experiences through connecting artists to leading sensorial experts and people with disabilities, offering new perspectives on creating an inclusive live experience for their audience members.
“Artists are supported in this process by world-leading ‘sense experts’ and experience designers such as Colin Nightingale (Punchdrunk, A Right/Left Project) who has worked with Jack White and James Lavelle (UNKLE) among many others. Together they research and develop sustainable ways of incorporating taste, scent, touch, visuals, lighting, decoration, outfits, dramaturgy, choreography and much more into performance, creating an immersive, multi-sensory experience. Adding these new elements to a live show stimulates all the senses.”
“The artists in our program create a new dimension that enriches the experience for the whole audience, deepening their emotional connection, improving the experience and becoming more accessible for those with a limitation. The result is everyone in the audience can enjoy live music equally, which hasn’t been the case before. So it’s a win-win, which we describe as Creative Accessibility.”
For the past two years, Revelland ran a pilot program with KNARS (NL), KRANKk (BE) and Perhaps Contraption (UK) to take their live gigs to a whole other level. Aram Abgaryan of KRANKk said: “We have paid extra attention to visuals, dance, smell, and even sign language. By involving people with disabilities in the development and the performance of this show, we hope to be as inclusive as possible. We used our album DARK to improvise with dancers with disabilities. You dissolve the disability when you’re in that flow, with that mindset, creating art together.”
Next year, Revelland plans to kick off a new program with six artists from six European countries. The program includes training and coaching in immersion, accessibility and sensory effects. The artists will learn how to integrate sensorial elements in their performances and develop an immersive and multi-sensory set that benefits the entire audience including i.e. people with hearing impairment or intellectual disabilities. The multi-sensory acts will showcase at Sencity 2024 in The Netherlands. In addition, they will perform in several renowned national and international music festivals across Europe.