Material #50: Audience, audience, audience!
Spaces for unique material
In a session with high schoolers earlier this year on the impacts the upcoming 2026 World Cup in their city, one student was initially thrown off by the “themes” that they were workshopping on in groups. When I expanded the question to simply ask “what do you think about how the World Cup might affect people here” he came out with a brilliant and detailed response, uniquely his.
This year I’ve repeatedly come across the limitations of communication when frames are “imposed”, intentionally or unintentionally. And I’m more and more interested in creating spaces where there’s opportunities for completely original material and perspectives to emerge: something that I’ll be honing in on in 2025 (keep tuned!).
On a related note, this quote kept coming back to me since I first read it. It’s reinforced by similar perspectives on the future of journalism, which can in turn be applied to other fields:
“Journalism only has a future if it radically reinvents the relationship with its audience.”
- Clara Vuillemin, co-founder of the digital magazine Republik, quoted here
Shifting from “communicating to” to “communicating with” might sound simple (social media, anyone?) but there are a ton of creative, thoughtful ways to facilitate and deepen that shift. And opening up to a multiplicity of perspectives doesn’t need to be a final step. If I have something of a recurrent “theory of change” it would be “communication - connection - action”. In other words: listening and learning; building unexpected points of connection and common cause; moving forwards from there; repeat…
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Through 2024, It’s Material is sharing one use of the word “material” each week, on Tuesdays
Very Interesting! In the same way, we need to reinvent how we communicate with the audience. This can also be related to how we must rethink how we communicate research. Engaging in research has more to do with a participatory and collaborative approach, and in my personal perspective, it is the first step to reinventing how we communicate in research.