In order to both advertise and generate interest in my performance I conducted some research into the content I was including. I was curious to find out other opinions on this; when do the public feel England celebrated it’s greatest days, when did this vision of Arcadia exist? I spoke to over 100 people in the Lincoln area to find out when in history they indicated. After speaking to members of the public across the city, I share my results below:
Reading clockwise from “12 o’clock”
Blue: Today
Red: 1990s
Green: 1980s
Purple: 1960s
Blue: 1940s
Orange: Winning World War 1 & 2
Blue: Before the Wars
Pink: Elizabethan Times
Green: At the Peak of the Empire
Purple: Never
You can see from this that, in the research sample, the most popular findings were the 1980s, 1960s and that this idyllic vision of England has never existed. Some of these participants were also recorded so that I may share this process within the performance itself. These two popular decades feature in the performance. What was interesting was the answers I had not anticipated, such as the period when England’s empire was vast. This leads me to believe that my performance has the potential to expand from the 10 minute project, in which I examine only five different time periods. Consider also that this was data received from just over 100 people in Lincoln. If I conducted the same research in different cities I may get entirely different answers that Lincoln’s public.