Instead of looking at the impact of a new stage show in terms of tickets sold or hotel nights booked, Queensland-based company Everybody NOW! has other metrics it prefers to focus upon.
Roller Coaster, which premiered on the outdoor stage at Home of the Arts (HOTA) last year as part of the Gold Coast festival BLEACH*, was in development for five years – thanks in part to COVID – and involved the participation of almost 500 local roller-skaters over an extended series of songwriting workshops, open skate sessions, conversations, choreography workshops and more.
The resulting production was raucous, life affirming and uplifting, not only a celebration of rock ‘n’ roll and roller-skating as metaphors for picking yourself up after life has worn you down, but also a deeply inclusive example of community-focused practice.
Roller Coaster was an important reminder that ‘participatory practices have the potential to disrupt patterns of daily life and, dare we say capitalism, and to place social relations above consumption and economic activity,’ to quote Everybody NOW! co-Director Ian Pidd, who directed the stage production.
A new Impact Report detailing both the development and numerous positive outcomes of Roller Coaster has now been published by Everybody NOW! – which begs the question, why try and quantify something as intangible as the increased sense of wellbeing that 98% of Roller Coaster participants reported feeling after the production’s Gold Coast premiere?
‘Quantifying [Roller Coaster] is not necessarily essential for the people who have experienced it. And in some ways that’s a point of tension, because we don’t open a creative process with the invitation being “come and be a part of this creative project so we can research and evaluate you”. That’s not the intention at all. The invitation, is let’s create art together,’ says Kate Baggerson, Executive Director, Everybody NOW!
‘But more and more we’re seeing the value of our work across other social areas: health and wellbeing, mental health, and the arts being able to make contributions or being recognised and validated for their contributions in that space. So that was the reason for quantifying Roller Coaster, in order to open up dialogue with the broader sector – and other sectors – about what this work can be,’ she tells ArtsHub.
The Roller Coaster Impact Report makes for fascinating and compelling reading: not just for artists with a passion for community wellbeing and socially engaged practice, but for anyone who believes that art can help bridge the rapidly growing divides in our communities – whether such divides be between regional and metropolitan communities, the left and right sides of politics, or even art and sport.
As consulting academics Dr Adele Pavlidis and Professor Simone Fullagar note in the Impact Report: ‘Arts projects that engage with sport cultures, to explore the desires, tensions and concerns of communities, offer a unique space of collaboration at a time when emotional wellbeing is fragile for many in the social world.’
Just as importantly, works like Roller Coaster actively break down hierarchies in the sector and play an important role in diminishing public perceptions that the arts are somehow the exclusive domain of “elites”. As Pavlidis says: ‘Everybody NOW! allows people to see themselves as creative people.’
This aspect of Roller Coaster and the benefits of Everybody NOW’s focus on inclusive and community-engaged practice is clearly and powerfully communicated in the pages of the Impact Report.
In terms of positive impacts, 97% of participants said Roller Coaster ‘helped me to feel connected to people in the community’; 98% of participants reported a positive impact on wellbeing, and 95% said it increased their access to the arts and cultural activities.
The sense of joy experienced by Roller Coaster audiences and participants alike through the welcoming, multigenerational and participatory creative spaces that Everybody NOW! works intentionally to nurture is also clearly articulated in the Report. As one community participant, Carly Brady, articulates: ‘My highlight was the feeling of pride and the incredible sense of joy and community.’
While Kate Baggerson and her Everybody NOW! colleagues hope the Roller Coaster Impact Report will give weight and impetus to other companies and projects working in similar fields, she also hopes it will encourage other festivals to potentially invest in future productions of Roller Coaster.
‘The way our performance works function is that now the structure exists, the songs exist, the model of how we involve skaters into the show exists – so now we can take that framework into new communities and create the show again,’ Baggerson says.
‘Skating communities are booming right across Australia. There are close to 100 roller derby teams right across Australia; roller-skating in skate parks is becoming more popular for women and girls and gender expansive people … and then the nostalgic roller disco thing has just gone through the roof as well. And all these folks all have some pretty amazing stories to tell. So there is definitely a community and an audience out there, and we would love to do Roller Coaster again right across the country.’
Should Roller Coaster be picked up elsewhere for a new Australian season, its demonstrated benefits will continue to ripple out through and strengthen connections within new, diverse communities. On this note, the final word goes to another community participant in the original Gold Coast season.
‘Everybody NOW! created a space where anything I had to contribute was welcome; stories were welcome, everyone was welcome. I think it’s important that people’s voices are heard in communities, so to see those stories turn into something creative is pretty amazing,’ says participant Lucy Millar.
Learn more about Everybody NOW! and the Roller Coaster Impact Report.
