Astrid Breel

Astrid Breel is a researcher, maker and educator, whose interdisciplinary work explores participation, agency and impact within an interdisciplinary context. She is interested in the reasons people have for taking part in events and projects (from theatre to research), how their experiences become meaningful for them, and how we can capture these meaningful experiences in a way that does justice to them. Astrid is an Associate of Coney (who make play to spark change) and a member of artist-led organisation Residence in Bristol, UK.

Astrid’s research explores meaning-making processes, through which an audience member or participant interprets their experience of a work or project and creates the meaning that this has for them, in a variety of contexts. Her practice focuses on developing situations that enable two-way engagement between audiences/participants and artists or researchers to create meaningful experiences of participation. Within her work, she takes an interdisciplinary and mixed-methods approach; drawing on performance studies, cognitive philosophy and psychology, and combining theoretical, practice-based and audience research methodologies to enable an understanding of participation that incorporates multiple perspectives.