Sound Based Microinterventions

Research project funded by a grant from the ARC Research Group at Inholland, and the work that led to Connected Creativity.

The question was narrow: whether short pieces of sound could do something that a worksheet cannot. Business students are asked to develop personal and creative skills, but the usual material is written, and reading about attention is a poor way to practise it. Sound asks for a different kind of attention. It arrives in the body before it is understood, and it takes as long as it takes.

The project produced a set of audio-based interventions — short recordings designed to be used inside personal development training rather than listened to as music. Each one does one thing: settles a room, opens a period of unfocused thinking, marks a transition, closes a session. They are meant to be played, not studied.

Its limits are what pointed towards the next project. Sound on its own could shift the state a group was in, but it could not carry a curriculum. That took a fuller framework, which became the ARTFUL method and the Connected Creativity book.

The project concluded in 2021. The recordings will be released on Spotify.