Entry Log 014
A Front Row Without Barriers
Everyone is Invited
Written by Captain Scott Woldian
I've been thinking about something. Which, according to Khalina, is usually where the trouble starts.
Entry Log 013 looked backwards. We went through Stu's rather unconventional route into all of this and tried to understand where some of the thinking behind Terra Nueva actually came from. Now I want to go somewhere completely different. Because before we get deeper into the technology, the Triple Live Experience, digital twins, virtual venues and all the clever things we're researching, there's a much more important question we should probably answer.
Who is all this actually for?
The answer ought to be simple.
Everyone.
But saying everyone is easy. Building something that actually means everyone is considerably harder.
"Just go to the gig."
For many of us, going to a live show is something we barely think about. Buy a ticket. Get there. Queue. Go inside. Find your seat or your patch of floor. Watch the show. Go home with ringing ears and, depending on your age, complain about your back for the next two days. Simple. Except...it isn't simple for everybody.
For someone with a physical disability, the venue itself may create barriers before the first note has even been played. For someone with social anxiety, the thought of entering a crowded room full of strangers might be enough to stop them going altogether. For somebody who is neurodivergent, the noise, lights, crowds, queues and unpredictability of a live environment may become overwhelming. Someone else may have hearing or visual access requirements. Someone may have a chronic or temporary mobility issue. Someone might need a carer or companion. Someone might simply be frightened of walking into an unfamiliar environment without knowing what to expect. And then there are the barriers we don't normally call accessibility. Geography. Money. Language. Culture. Travel. Family responsibilities. Being thousands of miles away from the artist you love.
There are countless reasons why somebody who wants to be part of a live experience simply can't be standing in the room that night. So perhaps the question shouldn't be:
"Why can't you come to the show?"
Perhaps it should be:
"How can we bring you into it?"
That's where Triple Live becomes interesting
We've talked about the Triple Live Experience before. Physical. Global. Virtual. One live event. Three ways of being part of it. The physical audience is there in the venue. The global audience can participate through livestreaming. And the virtual audience can potentially enter a digital version of that environment. Until now, we've mainly talked about that in terms of reach, technology and new commercial possibilities. But there's another possibility that may ultimately prove far more important.
Access.
Not access as an afterthought. Not a button hidden somewhere in the settings. Not a compromise for somebody who couldn't have the "proper" experience. A genuine choice in how somebody participates. Because perhaps the Triple Live Experience isn't about giving everybody the same experience. Perhaps it's about giving everybody a way into the experience that works for them.
Imagine knowing the venue before you arrive
This is one of the possibilities I find particularly interesting. Imagine somebody who wants to attend a concert but experiences significant social anxiety. A conventional approach says: Buy the ticket and turn up.
But what if they could visit the venue beforehand? Not physically.But virtually. Walk through a digital twin. Find the entrance. See the route inside. Understand where the toilets are. Find the accessible areas. See where their seat is. Understand how far it is from an exit. Explore the space quietly, in their own time, without hundreds of people around them. Perhaps they visit it once. Perhaps ten times. Then, when the night of the actual show arrives, they're not walking into a completely unknown environment. They've been there before. Not physically. But enough to remove some of the uncertainty. Could that help somebody who previously avoided live events feel confident enough to attend?
We don't know. But that's exactly the sort of question worth researching. And if they still decide the physical venue isn't right for them? That's fine too. Because the virtual experience shouldn't exist simply as training wheels for the "real" one. It should be a valid experience in its own right.
Not the cheap seats of the digital world
This is something I feel strongly about. If we build this properly, the virtual audience cannot become the people who weren't able to get into the real room and were given a consolation prize. "Sorry you couldn't make it. Here's a little screen." That's not inclusion. The challenge is to ask:
What can the virtual experience do that the physical one can't?
Could someone choose their perspective? Could they move between different areas? Could they experience information or content that isn't available inside the venue? Could captions be personalised? Could sign-language interpretation become part of an individual's experience rather than something everybody has to view in exactly the same way? Could visual information support people with hearing loss? Could alternative audio or descriptive information support visually impaired audiences? Could somebody reduce certain sensory elements? Could someone participate socially with friends...or choose not to interact with anybody at all? Could a person who finds crowds difficult experience the energy of a live event without having to endure the part that makes attending impossible for them?
Some of those things may be achievable. Some may not. Some may require technology we haven't settled on yet. And some ideas will probably turn out to be completely wrong. That's what R&D is for.
And here's where we need to be careful
There's a trap in all of this. It's very easy for a group of people developing technology to sit in a room and decide what disabled people need. We shouldn't do that. In fact, we mustn't do that.
If Terra Nueva and the Triple Live Experience are going to take accessibility seriously, then people with lived experience need to be involved in shaping it. Disabled audiences. Disabled artists. People who are neurodivergent. People who experience social anxiety. Carers. Accessibility professionals. Organisations already doing excellent work in this area. Not once we've finished building it. While we're building it.
We shouldn't arrive with a finished product and say:“Look what we've made for you."
We should be asking: "What would make this work for you?"
And then listen to the answer. Even when the answer isn't what we expected. Especially then.
Accessibility doesn't stop with disability
There's another part of this conversation that matters. Someone can be perfectly physically capable of attending a concert and still be excluded from it. Perhaps the nearest show is hundreds of miles away. Perhaps the travel costs more than the ticket. Perhaps they have young children. Perhaps they're caring for somebody. Perhaps they can't afford a hotel. Perhaps they're in another country. Perhaps they don't speak the same language. Perhaps they're an older fan who no longer wants to spend two hours standing in a packed venue. Perhaps they're simply not comfortable going alone.
None of those people love the artist any less. So why should geography or circumstance decide whether they're allowed to participate? A teenager in Dundee. A wheelchair user in Glasgow. Someone struggling with social anxiety in London. A fan in Ukraine. Someone sitting at home in Tokyo. Different lives. Different circumstances. Same invitation.
That's what all-inclusive should actually mean. Not everybody being treated identically. Everybody being welcomed.
And this goes beyond music
The same thinking can extend throughout Terra Nueva. Music. Cinema. Sports.
Think about sport. A supporter may have followed a team for their entire life but no longer be physically able to attend. Could a virtual environment offer something more social and immersive than watching television alone?
Cinema. Film festivals. Premieres. Q&As. Behind-the-scenes experiences.
Could people participate who would otherwise never be able to travel to the event? And then there's the community around all of it. Because entertainment isn't only the thing happening on the stage, screen or pitch.
It's also the conversation around it. The anticipation. The friendships. The shared experience. The feeling that you were there. That's what we need to understand.
The individual should be in control
Perhaps one of the biggest opportunities of a digital environment is that it doesn't necessarily have to treat every audience member identically. Someone might want everything. Crowds. Conversation. Interaction. Noise. Energy.
Someone else may want to enter with three friends and ignore everybody else. Another person may want to watch quietly. Someone experiencing social anxiety may initially want to observe without interacting at all. That's okay. Why shouldn't the individual decide? Participation doesn't have to mean performance. You shouldn't have to behave in a particular way to belong to a community. Sometimes simply being there is enough.
This isn't charity
There's something else we should be very clear about. Making live entertainment more accessible isn't simply a nice thing to do. And disabled audiences aren't a charitable project. They're an audience. Fans. Customers. Creators. Artists. Professionals. People with money to spend and experiences they want to participate in.
The same applies to people excluded by geography, anxiety, cost or circumstance. If a venue physically holds 2,000 people, that's the physical limit of the building. It doesn't necessarily have to be the limit of the event.
A genuinely inclusive Triple Live Experience could potentially allow an artist, venue or promoter to reach people who would otherwise never have been part of that night.
That creates inclusion. But it can also create new audiences, new relationships and new revenue. Those things don't have to be enemies. In fact, if we're going to make any of this sustainable, they can't be.
We have an unusual opportunity
Normally accessibility gets discussed after something has been built. The building exists. The system exists. The platform exists. Then somebody asks: "How do we make this accessible?" We're not there yet. Terra Nueva is still being researched. The Triple Live Experience is still being developed. We're still testing technologies. We're still learning. Which means we have a rare opportunity. We can ask these questions before the walls go up.
Accessibility doesn't have to be bolted onto Terra Nueva later. It can be part of the architecture from the beginning. And perhaps that's the architectural lesson from Entry Log 013 coming back sooner than expected. Before you build something... think about the people who are going to use it. All of them.
A front row without barriers
I don't know exactly what the finished Triple Live Experience will look like. None of us do. And I'm increasingly convinced that's a good thing. Because if we're serious about building something new, we should still be listening. Still questioning. Still testing. Still changing our minds when the evidence tells us to. But I do think we can make one decision now. Nobody should be excluded by design. Not because of disability. Not because of anxiety. Not because of geography. Not because of language. Not because they can't afford to cross the world for a concert. Not because they experience the world differently from somebody else.
Terra Nueva isn't supposed to tell people how they should experience entertainment. It's supposed to give them more ways to experience it. Physical. Global. Virtual. Different ways in. Same community. Not everybody needs the same experience. Everybody deserves a way into it.
That's Entry Log 014. And it raises an important problem for us. Because saying all of this is one thing. Building it is another. We need to connect the physical event, global livestream and virtual world. We need to understand the technology. We need more testing. More research. More collaboration. And eventually, considerably more scale.
Captain Scott Woldian
Storyteller and Narrator of the Terra Nueva Entry Logs