LBO involves a series of four overlapping residencies with our partner organisations. Each residency is a bespoke collaboration involving a six-month period of experimentation and making. Our plans are developed collectively through pre-residency discussions with our partners about their aspirations for the residency and the development of their practice. The period of overlap enables our partners to come together so each residency learns from and builds on the previous one. Our partners also collaborate through a series of Key Partner Meetings to share methods, activities, and feedback on project work.
Our ‘helical’ model of cyclical and iterative phases of collaborative experimentation enables the team to address and return to key ideas across the four residencies:
One unique and valuable aspect of our partnership arrangements is the funding model we are using. In planning the project, we ensured that each of our partner organisations has their own budget which they allocate and spend independently. This means our activities are genuinely partner-led and that the project has lasting legacies for our partners in multiple forms, including creative outputs, equipment, and professional development training. The developmental and exploratory nature of the LBO project, including our budget flexibility, has made it possible to respond to emerging project needs and ideas: for example, during the BMA pre-residency period we established a collaboration with a research team exploring groundwater contamination levels in Bhopal and were able to divert funding to the collection of valuable new data. We have achieved more because of this openness and flexibility.
The legacies of our residencies are new and emergent research questions, methods, outputs and practices that partner organisations can take forward themselves. Our outputs to date include an interactive performance designed for students in special schools, curriculum transformations employing VR technologies, digital storytelling resources, and the development of an interactive exhibition on personalised medicine.