This project demonstrated what can be achieved artistically and culturally when people with learning disabilities are in control, using their own ideas rather than having things imposed upon them.

To allow this to happen, the strategic decision to increase
the workshop provision above

the budgeted-for level was taken. It was absolutely vital to the building of these audiences that a relationship was built between individuals with learning disabilities, their support networks and the venues concerned. To achieve this, there needed to be time built in to the project for participants to take ownership of the artistic environment that they were being invited in to. The residency model created this time and the bond between participants and the venue, and created the momentum needed to make change happen.

Heart ‘n Soul has acted as an innovator - showing venues, carers and families, local authorities, local drama groups and people within the wider community another way, a new way of working that is all about empowerment and enjoyment, breaking down fears and removing any tendency of well-intentioned interference.

• 333 people took part in the workshop programme
  
• Six music theatre pieces were created by residency groups and performed to audiences
  
• Participants were able to choose what to do from a range of options, and could make personal developments at their own pace

This project was focussed entirely on the ambitions and potential of its participants. Heart ‘n Soul considers anyone attending or taking part to be a participant. Members of Heart ‘n Soul’s regular workshops led the way in the initial stages, demanding the opportunity to share their experiences, skills and talents with other people all around the country. When the project application was made, members’ suggestions and ambitions were central to it. Heart ‘n Soul members worked as co-tutors throughout the project, sharing their training with new colleagues, whilst developing their own skills and experiences at the same time.

For many, simply attending an event was a huge achievement. The first event offered was a matinee, and as mentioned above, this is a strategic way of increasing the likelihood of first-time attendance. Many people with learning disabilities have lives that revolve around day service opportunities. To do anything outside of this involves negotiation with family or carers to encourage them to act as the support network ‘out of hours’. If the first experience can happen within day service hours, with the relative ease of support and transport provision that that offers, then it is possible that people may be encouraged to come back a second time, perhaps in the evening. Many people will never have had the opportunity to be at the centre of the arts activity themselves, or to see other people like them in the limelight and in control. If they can experience this, they may then be inspired to do something themselves, or to demand that their carers and support networks provide the opportunity to take part again. It is very important for Heart ‘n Soul that by the end of the project, the organisation is communicating with as many individuals as possible (through the build up of the database) and that they are offering evening opportunities in mainstream venues at sociable times. As Janet Bobin declares in LARGE "...we’re here, and I won’t hide away".

Case studies
The development journeys of these participants provide good examples of the many personal and team achievements that were brought about.
Nick Gilmour had been a member of the Octopus Workshop for two years. Nick is autistic and when he joined the Octopus Workshop would barely speak. The regular workshop and work as a crew member at Heart ‘n Soul events built up Nick’s confidence and skills level enough to be able to act as a co-tutor on the New Audiences project. Nick was invited to be the visual arts co-tutor on the residency at West Yorkshire Playhouse. His fellow tutor, Anita McKeown, reported that his confidence had grown markedly as the week went on. On day one, Nick positioned himself within the group almost as though he were one of the participants, but gradually, Anita was able to pass control over to her co-tutor. By day four, Nick was leading the group, taking time to individually praise each participant’s work. That night he again led the way, working as a crew member on the Leeds’ first Beautiful Octopus Club.

He said that he was interested in music, DJ-ing and clubbing, but that he had had no training. He took part in the taster workshop in Canterbury and the next day, he and the friends that he had brought along were the first to arrive to see Positive Hearts perform. After the show Gerard looked over the shoulder of the Heart ‘n Soul DJ during the post-show party. Three months later he was DJ-ing in the foyer/bar of the Gulbenkian Theatre having participated on the residency project. He attended a performance of LARGE at the Gulbenkian in November and was the foyer/bar DJ at that event. In February 2003 he attended the visioning meeting that Heart ‘n Soul arranged, and put himself forward as a member of the local steering group that has been established to try to continue the work that the New Audiences project has started. He has since been to a Beautiful Octopus Club to research ideas for a local event, and talked to Heart ‘n Soul about coming-up to London to DJ at a Beautiful Octopus Club.

Damien Sier from Kidderminster made an extraordinary effort to take part in the New Audiences project. He committed to travelling six hours a day by public transport to take part. When asked what had made him go to such lengths he said "Because Heart ‘n Soul’s worth it. Because what we’re doing is worth it."

For many of the participants, the added social element of the project made a huge impact. Geraldine Regan and June Jenkins supported several of their ‘clients’ who took part in the residency held at LIPA. They contacted the local press themselves, and had a small piece about the project with a photograph of the group published in a newspaper. Later, for the show at the Liverpool Playhouse, they decided to make a night of it, and went for a meal before the show, as well as having a drink afterwards. The women that they were supporting had been commissioned by Mencap’s Viewpoint magazine to write a review of the show, which they duly did, and were paid for. Geraldine and June stressed in evaluation sessions the importance to their ‘clients’ of the recognition that this project had brought them, be it from the press or from the fact that their families came along to see just what they could do, and had enjoyed themselves in the process.

Each of these, and the many more individual stories of achievement that were heard during the course of the project come together to represent the power of a project such as this. A project that was led by people with learning disabilities in the arts by people with learning disabilities through the arts; which changed lives and changed minds.

Partnerships achievements

• Effective partnerships were established and maintained with a range of individuals and organisations to meet the needs of each region.
  
• Tasks were shared in a way that best reflected the skills and experience of each partner.
  
• Follow-up work is planned in all four regions. Dates are pencilled for follow-up Beautiful Octopus Clubs in the West Midlands and Yorkshire regions, as well as a further tour date for The Experience.

After participants, this project was about partnerships.

In each region, the partnerships formed were very different, but they were all based on the same principles. Heart ‘n Soul wanted to be very clear from the outset about what it could offer, and wanted people in each region to help make the project in their area as locally-focussed as possible.

In every case though, Heart ’n Soul had to take the lead. In Canterbury, where the disability arts network was least developed of the four regions, Heart ‘n Soul decided to hold a meeting early in 2002 to bring local authority cultural and social care leaders together with arts professionals. This proved to be a decisive moment. The Marlowe Theatre, the original partners for the final phase of the project decided not to attend, and shortly afterwards pulled out of the project. They cited concerns about fitting Heart ‘n Soul within their programme, and doubts as to whether an audience could be found. The meeting therefore took place between enthusiastic if nervous representatives from the Gulbenkian Theatre and curious and eager local authority staff. It was important to make the Heart ‘n Soul method of work clear, as everyone coming in to the meeting of course initially had their own agenda. By the end of the meeting, there was a clarity of understanding between the group, and a network in place that would support the project throughout.

In Liverpool, Heart ‘n Soul chose to work closely with North West Disability Arts Forum. This provided Heart ‘n Soul with direct access to venue accessibility information, a contacts database and a support network, which helped with negotiations with venues. Whilst the arts-based network was already in existence, the local authority back-up was more difficult to tap in to. Here Heart ‘n Soul initially made an error. Instead of relying on their instincts and previous experience, they tried to rely too heavily on the arts network, rather than making the same local authority links early on that they had in Canterbury. This did make the audience development harder, and put the pressure on when the venues increased in size. Whilst many disabled people would not identify themselves with social care networks, the majority of people with learning disabilities are only to be found by first finding their support system. It is then the Heart ‘n Soul technique to gather individuals’ contact details at events so that the organisation puts the power of information in their hands. It is this method that Heart ‘n Soul has used so effectively in London, and to which after the initial detour it returned to.

It wasn’t until the very end of the project that Heart ‘n Soul really began to get all the stakeholders talking directly to eachother. Although not initially budgeted for, Heart ‘n Soul felt that it was imperative that there was an opportunity to bring together all of the individuals and representatives of the organisations that had made it happen to talk about what had and hadn’t worked, and what they each wanted for the future. These meetings were extremely lively and productive, and enabled individuals and organisations to unify behind a shared aim and to listen to participants with learning disabilities saying what they can and want to do.

Organisation's achievements

• Over two thousand people took part in the project, enjoying nine events and a series of workshops
  
• Heart ‘n Soul as an organisation formalised its working practices and unified its efforts
  
• Heart ‘n Soul more than delivered its aims and objectives, and got through the difficulties it faced along the way
  
• The coming of age of a number of performance groups and individuals within Heart ‘n Soul, and from target local communities.
  
• Heart ‘n Soul took risks, and these risks paid off

Organisational structure
The project was set to a very tight time-scale, and was in the main a rolling programme, meaning that the success of each phase was largely dependent on the achievements of the previous one. This meant that perhaps for the first time, the project had to be treated very much as a separate entity to the regular programme of work and needed to be given its own life and management structure.
With previous touring projects, project delivery was juggled in-amongst other project commitments, with staff taking on very specialised roles, often in some degree of isolation. This approach had to change given the scale of this project, and considering the numbers of people involved. As with previous projects, each member of staff took on responsibility for a particular area of work. However, formal meeting structures were introduced, as well as a policy for monitoring and evaluating at all levels. This meant that there were improved lines of communication between staff, and with partner organisations. Formalising the evaluation process by staff meant that for the first time, precious time was set aside by staff to share their thoughts on the newly completed phase. Members of staff were able to get to the root of problems that they had faced, and to plan improvements for the next phase. Giving the time to these meetings gave weight to people’s observations, ideas and feelings, and engraved a united vision within busy and tired minds.

Organisational Capacity
Audience Development
The project forced Heart ‘n Soul to also formalise and sharpen-up its audience development practices. Partner venues were either very limited in their resources, or in their experience of this type of work, and so Heart ‘n Soul had to take the lead. This meant developing the organisation’s database to cope with the new information that was to be added. The marketing of the events was to be crucial, and often deadlines between the final confirmation of event details and the print run, or between one event and the next were extremely tight. Volunteers and freelance administrative support staff were brought in to support the research process, finding potential audience members, adding their records to the database, and mailing out to them. There was little time between the mailout for one event, and the start of the research period for the next, and often these periods overlapped.

Without the additional support of freelance staff, this could not have been achieved within the time-scale the project demanded. However, the results were very good, and there is now a tried and tested model of tackling audience development for a project in a systematic way that will be applied to existing and future programmes of work.
This project switched the focus for the organisation from marketing to audience development, and this meant a re-weighting of the initial budget. Whereas the initial budget had scoped in additional work on seeking a mainstream audience, in the end resources had to be allocated to the core audience as a priority. Budgeting for the marketing materials was not enough, time and money had to be spent on the research process, the network building and the monotonous but essential task of data entry. That is not to say that there was no mainstream audience to be seen. There was a small but significant difference in the proportion of non-disabled people in attendance, according to audience surveys. Whereas Heart ‘n Soul would normally expect to attract an audience that is made up of thirty- percent non-disabled people to its regular London events, the figure rose to thirty-four percent for this project. Heart ‘n Soul believes that this is partly made-up of increased numbers of family, friends and carers attracted to the work because of its participatory nature, and partly of the core audience of each venue.

There are some interesting anecdotes to this end:

Gulbenkian Theatre
A small number of theatre-goers booked for their habitual meal and a show deal, relying on the strength of the normal programme offered. Seventeen tickets were sold on releases of the brochure before any other publicity work or specialised mailout had taken place.

Another group of participants came out of interest. In most cases these attenders were staff at the University of Kent on whose campus the theatre is situated, and had seen posters around the site or heard about the event within their work community.

There was also an exchange between the cinema-goers and the theatre-goers on the Heart ‘n Soul performance days as both audiences shared the foyer/bar and the Heart ‘n Soul DJ playing in it.

West Yorkshire Playhouse
One participant, a woman who came on her own to the club and who danced the night away, chatted to Lou Ford who co-ordinated the event for the venue. She told Lou that she had intended to go to the theatre itself, but had seen the flyer for the event whilst at the box office, changed her mind, and come straight to the club!

Liverpool Playhouse
Two audience members commented that Hannah Marvelly, a Japanese performer with the Original Company, was outstanding; "Eat your heart out Miss Saigon" they said.

These anecdotes and the audience survey figures back up the theory that this work could attract a wider audience and make yet further strides into the integration of disabled and non-disabled audiences and artists. The stories that the artists tell, and the responses they promote are universal, and the events themselves are welcoming environments for anyone, but perhaps particularly those experiencing theatre going for the first time. This project has shown the potential for capturing and pleasing this potential audience, but also revealed the additional resources that would be needed to make it grow in keeping with the Heart ‘n Soul ethos.

Levels of Participation
The levels of participation on this project exceeded expectations. Audience targets set by Heart ‘n Soul at the beginning of the project were accurately realised and bettered, and partner venues were pleasantly surprised by attendance figures. Participation on residencies and in workshops was also good, with many more people applying to take part than could be accommodated.

There is still a great deal of untapped potential for audience growth both in terms of mainstream and learning-disabled attenders, leaving Heart ‘n Soul and its partners in a very exciting position at the conclusion of this project.

The use of co-tutors at all stages of the project allowed tutors with learning disabilities to develop their skills and add to their experience. The role of the co-tutor will now be formalised, and gradually built into all other areas of the organisation’s work. Not only this, but Heart ‘n Soul is now involving its members more at every level, using the maturity of its older members to help develop the skills of younger members. Constitutionally Heart 'n Soul is giving its members a much stronger voice through the establishment of the Members’ Council, and by changes made to the set-up of the Council of Management.

Project Management
This project tested Heart ‘n Soul’s limits. The strain came with trying to squeeze a mammoth project into one year, alongside a regular programme of work, and to make the most of such a fantastic opportunity at the same time. As a result, the organisation now has a very clear idea of its boundaries, and a much more realistic notion of what it takes, both financially and in terms of people-power, to deliver this, or a similar, programme of work. Another added benefit is that there is a greater understanding of Heart ‘n Soul’s work and its ethos within venues, so that planning for the future can be informed by a more mutual understanding of the aims and key strategies from the start.

Risk-taking
Funding
The full costs of the project could not be entirely met by the grant that was awarded, and Heart 'n Soul therefore took the strategic decision to seek partnership funding and to ensure that the balance of the project costs was met from core funds. The details of the financial situation are explored later in the Key Lessons section of Part Three. Heart 'n Soul concludes that this decision ensured best value in terms of the original grant.

Planning
The New Audiences project was a huge strain on the organisation due to its tight time-span, and inevitably meant that there were times when the focus was taken off regular London events and activities. This slightly negative outcome can however be regarded as the beginning of a period of re-positioning for Heart ‘n Soul as an organisation with a genuinely national remit, with a more appropriate balance between its London-based and its regional work. Planning for 2003 was directly influenced by the course of the New Audiences project, with slightly reduced capacity planned for London events run by Heart ‘n Soul. This will allow Heart 'n Soul to place greater emphasis on acting as a catalyst and innovator to the other groups that it has inspired in London and beyond.

Working with advisers
Heart ‘n Soul benefited from the opportunity to work with guidance from advisers throughout the project. Aspirational Arts was appointed to advise on monitoring and evaluation, and Sarah Scott became a go-between, mentor and constant support to the staff, in particular to the Director and the Communications Officer.

The roles of these advisers were very unclear for the first four months of the project. How could they help? How much time would they have? Are they helping or evaluating? These are a few of the questions that needed to be answered. Heart ‘n Soul’s staff were flat out with trying to get the project off the ground, and needed to have the roles and the expectations very clearly explained to them.

In the end, Sarah Scott brought clarity and definition to the role that she would play, and in turn she helped to broker a relationship between Aspirational Arts and Heart ‘n Soul.

There then began a very fruitful mentoring of Heart ‘n Soul’s Communications Officer, as she began to bring structure and clarity to the monitoring and evaluation strategy needed to run alongside the planned work. It was extremely valuable to have the advisers in place at this time, and for the relationship between advisers and organisation to be a comfortable and relaxed one, as this allowed open discussion and exploration of ideas and brought a sharp focus to the needs of the project to a member of staff with split priorities.

Of course, what an organisation needs, or feels it needs, in the midst of a highly intensive project, is hands on deck, and so it was most useful for Heart ‘n Soul to meet with the advisers to tackle a specific issue rather than to try to sustain a constant trickle of minor queries. It was crucial that the advisory role did not seem to take up more time than could be warranted. Conversely, staff do not want to feel that they are asking too much of the advisers - how much time and real help could they ask for?

The role that Sarah Scott played as sole adviser to Heart ‘n Soul meant that there was a very full sharing of the project aims between adviser and organisation, and it was very pleasing to Heart ‘n Soul that Sarah Scott, as representative of Arts Council England, could attend all of the project events. Sarah brought a shared vision to the project that meant that she was able to initiate planning and visioning at every stage, which added considerably to the overall success of the project.

Part three - Conclusions

Strengths of the project

• Strength of the team under pressure.
  
• Knowledge that each of the elements of the project would work.
  
• Reaching a new audience of over two thousand people.
  
• Reaching an audience made up of a balance of disabled and non-disabled people.
  
• Acting as a catalyst to change, and to artistic development.
  
• Reaching young people in mainstream education giving them an awareness of what people with learning disabilities can achieve.
  
• The project brought new clarity to Heart ‘n Soul’s work.
  
• Heart ‘n Soul stretched themselves and took measured risks.

Weaknesses of the project

• There was too short a lead-in time, with too little time to conduct research.
  
• The scheduling of New Audiences events and activities was far too tight and clashed with regular events in London. The venues involved needed six to nine months more notice.
  
• There was at times an inconsistency in freelance staff used to work on the project. There was a necessity to add to the freelance pool due to increased work demands, which added to the strain on office staff managing the project. There were unexpected costs involved in re-rehearsing band members due to availability.
  
• There was at times a lack of understanding on the part of the venues and lines of communication were not always as clear as they should have been.

Key lessons
Funding
FUNDING STREAM
Heart ‘n Soul was excited and pleased to have been invited to apply to take part in the New Audiences project, a programme that fitted perfectly with the existing aims and direction of work of the organisation.

In making its application, Heart 'n Soul endeavoured to match the planned project to the grant figure that was being discussed. It was vitally important that the project included the development of new audiences in two regions where some touring work had already taken place, as well as those that were entirely new. This allowed a progression route to be opened-up for the two new regions, and provided a model for sharing the Heart ‘n Soul method with existing partners. This meant though that four regions would need to be catered for within the sum applied for.

In its original vision, Heart 'n Soul planned a residency to go alongside the mid-scale venue performance of The Experience. This was removed from the project budget before submission so as to keep within the total cost within Arts Council expectations. However, once the project got off the ground it was clear that the residency was a crucial element, and it was re-introduced and included in the baseline form.

This meant that transport and per diem costs were increased, as well as fees for members and support staff.

It costs a great deal more to actually allow the work to be delivered by artists with learning disabilities than to just pay lip service to the notion. However, this is the reality of how Heart ‘n Soul works. Its members are at the forefront of the organisation and the disability arts sector, and are, after sixteen years of establishing themselves, ready to take on many increased responsibilities and expectations.
Heart ‘n Soul hopes that this project serves to demonstrate what it takes in terms of financial support and staffing to be a genuinely disability-led organisation working to the very highest standards and attempting to offer the very best access to all.

MATCH FUNDRAISING
The time-scale of the project meant that opportunities to raise match funding were limited. Heart 'n Soul was therefore delighted to secure partnership funding from the Performing Rights Foundation and to link the project to an existing development strategy with the Diana, Princess of Wales, Memorial Fund, thereby making them another partner on the project.

CHANGES TO PROGRAMME
A number of strategic changes were made to the programme in order to ensure that all opportunities were taken to maximise the artistic and cultural benefits.

As mentioned above, extra days were added to the residency to ensure its meaningfulness for participants and venues.

The Experience had new material and a new design, yet there was no production budget in the New Audiences application. The artistic decision was taken to go ahead with these expenses however, as this was key to the artistic development of the artists concerned. The artistic developments made during the production of The Experience, with increased production values and the development of new material, have pointed the way for the next stage of creative development coined as the Joining the Dots project.

In addition to this, there was a key change to the programme that was out of Heart 'n Soul's hands. The Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury was initially the partner for the final phase of the project - the performance of LARGE. However, they dropped out citing concerns that Heart 'n Soul couldn't be fitted within their programme, and doubts that an audience would be found. A replacement venue of a similar scale and in the right area could not be found. This meant that to meet the demand of the new audience, there had to be two performances of LARGE at the smaller Gulbenkian Theatre. Whilst the two performances yielded excellent box office takings, this was not enough to cover the additional costs of doing a second performance.

VENUE FEES
Using the model of existing relationships with the venues involved in the Mid-Scale Touring project, Heart 'n Soul worked on the basis that partner venues on this New Audiences project would donate performance space and technical support free of charge as a form of match funding.

In fact, whilst the two existing partner venues, Oakengates Theatre and West Yorkshire Playhouse did offer space and time on this basis, none of the new partner venues could do the same. Heart 'n Soul realised that this form of in-kind support is only offered within the context of a relationship between venue and organisation, and not within a project that is perceived by the venues to have funded by enough to cover these costs.

INTERNAL FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT
During the main period of project delivery, Heart 'n Soul's Finance Manager was on maternity leave. This meant that the usual financial management systems were not in place and thus the degree of
over-spend on this project did not become apparent until the Finance Manager's return.

Scheduling
The lag between the verbal grant offer and the written contract was too great. This meant that negotiations with programmers were undermined, and that there were insufficient breaks in-between periods of project delivery to allow evaluation to take place in order to inform the next period of delivery.

It was also widely agreed that there should be yet a further day added into the residency model, as they had all felt rather rushed, not fully allowing the participants to fully flourish.

Communication
Heart ‘n Soul would like to develop a handbook to issue to partners and venues. This would be co-written by members and staff, and would offer advice as well as some guidelines for working with Heart ‘n Soul and its audiences. A generic handbook could be produced, but could be enhanced for the needs of a particular project or partner. The handbook could cover issues such as Heart ‘n Soul staff roles, technical requirements, access needs, box office requirements, audience development and evaluation strategies and suggestions for engaging with the media. It was felt that this could augment the venue awareness session and leave staff in partner organisations with a lifeline allowing them to work more independently during the project and beyond.

Content
Heart ‘n Soul has also identified that it would need to include Octopus Crew training as part of its residency model, so that the events that are held at the end of each residency are crewed in the same unique way that all of Heart ‘n Soul’s regular events are. This is vital to the overall empowerment of participants with learning disabilities and for the likelihood of the partner organisation being able to establish an event of their own. As part of this package, the resource needs of all aspects of the residency model would need to be reviewed, however partner organisations may be able to contribute by offering a member of their own technical staff as a potential tutor for this workshop, working alongside an experienced Heart ‘n Soul technical tutor.

The residency model that was regarded by the Heart ‘n Soul team as most successful was that linked to the Beautiful Octopus Club. That is because, for the Heart ‘n Soul team, it was wonderful to see partner organisations taking shared ownership of the residency and event, and for that event to have a unique flavour reflecting its own local community. It was also widely felt that the link between the performance workshops and The Experience, performed by the Original Company in the other type of residency was not strong enough to allow a full integration between the local participants and the Heart ‘n Soul members.

Heart ‘n Soul also acknowledges that it can not deliver this scale of work again without a Production Manager involved at every stage from the planning through to the delivery of the work.

Evaluation and Audience Development
These are two areas in which the organisation has already moved forward in leaps and bounds. In terms of audience development, the New Audiences project put a name and a time-structure to a process that had to a large extent already been taking place within the organisation organically. This has left Heart ‘n Soul with an easily communicable set of working methods that it can usefully share with others in the field, in particular with its partners. It will be crucially important that Heart ‘n Soul is supported to work with partner organisations in a way that puts an even greater degree of emphasis on partners getting involved in this area.

Regarding the monitoring and evaluation of this project, Heart ‘n Soul has never been more creative or rigorous in its attempts to get feedback, and to consider outcomes. The strategy specifically written to steer the team through the monitoring and evaluation of this project has already been adapted to act as a strategy for all of the work of the organisation. The organisation has also been taking the opportunities at meetings with partners, and other networking events to share its experiences with others. This element of the project was handled entirely by Heart ‘n Soul with little or no involvement from partners. In future, Heart ‘n Soul would like to see partner organisations offering local people with learning disabilities who have already worked with Heart ‘n Soul the opportunity to work on future events, for instance running the feedback video-booth, or conducting audience surveys.

WHERE NEXT?
Heart ‘n Soul can not feed the growing demand that the empowering nature of its work has initiated. This project has clearly demonstrated that, but at the same time allowed a new model of work for the future to emerge.

Heart ‘n Soul now seeks to reposition itself as an innovatory arts organisation that is also facilitator to the emergence of artists and audiences with learning disabilities around England and beyond.
The work has already begun with the conception of the Joining the Dots and the Time to Experiment projects. These projects aim to give the organisation breathing space to allow new creativity to emerge and be honed - using more integrated digital media, employing co-tutors with learning disabilities and increasing the interaction of participants with the work. There will also be a process of bringing together all of the groups that Heart ‘n Soul has helped to emerge - either directly or indirectly - to share skills and exchange artistic practice. Without the New Audiences project, Heart ‘n Soul would not have had the organisational capacity nor the networks, the maturity nor the shared belief from partners to make this a reality. A new era has dawned.