The happiness project

A collaboration led by the Roundhouse Theatre in London, this Wellcome Trust-funded project brings together neuroscientists, psychologists, social scientists and artists to explore understandings of happiness and well-being.

A company of 12 young artists and six academics will create and perform a piece of contemporary theatre exploring understandings of happiness and well-being to be shown at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and the Roundhouse in 2015. The process of composing the theatrical production will combine scientific and social scientific knowledge and experimentation with autobiographical, affective, phenomenological and representational observations of the conditions of happiness and well-being.

 

Image of someone looking at the night sky

Project aims

The company will explore happiness and its social, economic, political, psychological and neurological conditions through three areas:

  • Music and the mind
  • Material and emotional environments
  • Economics and consumerism

The theatrical production is a piece of what is known as ‘devised theatre’. Rather than starting from a script, the process of composing the theatrical production has taken place through a series of workshops. In these workshops, the academics and young artists have worked together to devise scenes, dance/movement sequences and dialogue that brings together their academic knowledge and autobiographical, affective, phenomenological and representational observations of the conditions of happiness and well-being.

The performance of the theatrical production will present the findings from the development process to a wider audience, and is intended to stimulate debate and to disseminate academic understandings of well-being to the public. One possibility is that the academics involved in the project may run a public symposium on our ideas regarding happiness during or around the time that the November run of the theatrical production is taking place.

We will also conduct an analysis of the Happiness Project in which we will run focus groups with the theatre company members (including the directors) to explore their understandings of happiness.

This analysis will consider what happens when various ways of apprehending, feeling, thinking and understanding happiness are articulated in the process of devising, performing and watching the Happiness Project. It will attend to how various narrations, expressions, attributions, statements, explanations, performances and fantasies of happiness and its conditions are articulated both by the young artists, academics and directors devising the theatrical production and by audience members at the performances of the theatrical production

Project findings and impact

The performance of the theatrical production will present the findings from the development process to a wider audience, and is intended to stimulate debate and to disseminate academic understandings of well-being to the public.

Research team

Emma Higham, Director, Roundhouse Theatre

Tashi Gore, Director, Glass Performance

Jess Thorpe, Dramaturg, Glass Performance

Viviane Hullin, Assistant Producer, Glass Performance

Ben Freedman, Documentary Maker

Dr Robb Ruttledge, Neuroscience, University College London

Dr Stephanie Lazzaro, Neuroscience, University College London

Archy de Berker, Neuroscience, University College London

Dr Jason Lim, Human Geography, University of Brighton

Dawn Rose, Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of London

Professor Lauren Stewart, Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of London

Output

One article for submission to a high-quality peer-reviewed journal by February 2016 is planned: the paper will use ethnographic observations of the process and practice of the Happiness Project to reflect upon what it suggests about the relationship between 'affect', embodiment and broader political, economic and cultural changes.

One article for submission to a high-quality peer-reviewed journal by March 2016 is planned. This paper will be co-written with Dawn Rose, Goldsmiths, University of London and will reflect on the interdisciplinary conceptual conversations that develop during the Happiness Project. In particular, it will consider connections and differences between approaches taken in the social sciences and humanities and approaches taken in neuropsychology in attempting to understand affect, qualia, embodiment and well-being.

Partners

Roundhouse Theatre, London

Glass Performance, Glasgow