Talkaoke is a pop up talk show that has been gaining popularity in festivals, clubs, galleries, theatres, conferences and on the street. it consists of an illuminated round table with a host sitting in the middle on a swivel chair. Participants sit around the outside and are passed the microphone whenever they want to talk, coming and going as they please. The conversation is a journey from one unexpected subject to another. It can be topical, funny, deep, out-there, or all of the above. The participants must come up with the topics and it’s up to the host to keep everyone engaged.  Talkaoke is a great chance to hear the latest ideas that people are talking about and to generate and discover new ones.

The Talkaoke Promo video shows how table comes together, or see an example of it in action at This is Talkaoke. Or see our Residency at The National Theatre.

The Talkaoke table has been custom made and designed by The People Speak. It’s battery powered and can be deployed almost anywhere. The table has built in speakers and a microphone to amplify the conversation. It has lights and video recording equipment. The agenda is: there is no agenda. It is up to participants who sit round the table to come up with a collective direction. Our experienced host keeps the chat flowing.

Recently we’ve begun building new Talkaoke tables and running training courses. We have worked closely with the Antenna Gallery at The Science Museum, In Situ artists’ group in Lancashire and The Basildon Academies who are now all running their own successful Talkaoke sessions and events. If you are interested in setting up your own Talkaoke, please get in touch. We would love to help.

The art of facilitating a Talkaoke based conversation should look easy, but there are certain skills and tricks to keeping the conversation flowing. We are always looking to try out new people in the middle of the table to expand our pool of hosts and are running regular training nights at our studio sessions once a month. Check our events page from time to time to see when we are next running a studio sessions are.

Early days of Talkaoke at Rich Mix, London


Talkaoke at The Mix Festival, Peckham


Talkaoke in French at Pete The Monkey Festival

Who Wants to Be…? is the ask-the audience game show, where the audience asks the questions, comes up with the answers, and sets the rules! Using two visualisation systems, some gameshow glitz and a visual voting system, a large audience can brainstorm, feedback, and generate the most incredible ideas together.

In its simplest form each participant pays an equal contribution which goes into a pot. We stimulate the collective imagination. Through discussion, debate, and ultimately voting, they will decide how to spend the total. Who Wants to Be has helped an audience to decide how to spend £2000, how to renovate a much-loved public park, and a grass roots approach to solve the world’s climate crisis. It’s a fun, accessible recipe for micro-social change.

In the standard format, the first half is about idea generation, and the second narrows down, refines and selects the final idea. To vote, the audience are given a folded card with 3 fluorescent colours.

The host with a microphone presents the show and helps keep the conversation and ideas flowing but it’s up to participants to come up with the ideas and suggestions. Gamble the money. Generator for a village in Zambia. Make a Christmas single. Build the worlds largest crumpet… are just some of the great and fun suggestions we have had.

Using our Heckle system, participants’ suggestions are sent to the screen as words and images to the screen. Using any web enabled device they can post them up themselves. This keeps a visual record of what has been said. The best suggestions get put through to be voted on in the second round.

The best ideas are pitted against one another in the second half of the show in groups of three, with each idea getting a colour (red, green or yellow). Participants hold up a colour to the idea they best like and a camera counts the votes. These votes are calculated and the highest vote is put through to the next round, until it comes down to one final vote.

Watch some highlights of Who Wants to Be in action at The Unicorn Theatre and the Chapelfield of Dreams

One Night Grandstand: stadium for a night!

One Night Grandstand infuses a regular kick-about with the excitement of a football stadium. Games have a live, amplified commentary, floodlighting and stadium style screens above the pitch, complete with sound effects, live motion graphics and action replays.

Watch the One Night Grandstand promo video to see it in action on our Youtube or Vimeo channels.

Add the magic of commentary & sound effects

Each game, however formal or informal, is commentated live through the PA system by a dynamic and exciting football commentator. For the first One Night Grandstand, we had the good fortune to work with the brilliant Phil Parry of BBC London Sport. Live crowd sound effects, cheers & chants, are added making the pitch come alive with noise like a real stadium.

Feel like a superstar

One Night Grandstand not only brings an extra dimension to an everyday kick-about, it makes every moment matter, every kick of the ball, every decision, every goal the most important. Participants can give their name and details, or make up a fantasy name, to the commentary team so that they can hear their names announced on the over the PA throughout the match.

Workshops

Although we bring a trained commentator to every One Night Grandstand event, we also can train up budding commentators before an event to bring their own style and influence to the proceedings. And we don’t just stop at commentary as we can organise training on filming and using the sound effects.

The world of sport

And One Night Grandstand isn’t just limited to football, we’ve commentated on and have sound effects palettes for many different sporting events including, rugby, athletics, cycling, cricket, basketball, judo, boccia, to name a few.

The Portable Stadium Experience

If you are interested in bringing One Night Grandstand to your area and community then get in touch. Every One Night Grandstand event comes with a trained commentator and sound effects. But there is lots more that can be added to this. Events can be filmed and turned into a video for future viewing, a big screens can be added for instant live coverage of the on the pitch action as well as instant replay and live scoreboard. On all day events it’s great having a co-commentator who can help sum up the action as well as get live interviews from participants and teams.

If your interested in having One Night Grandstand at your event then please get in touch and we can help tailor the best package for your event.

One Night Grandstand was originally commissioned by  in 2005

The People Speak is a collective with the most amazingly diverse skills, interests, abilities and passions.

Every one of us has become part of The People Speak by doing Talkaoke, or one of our other events, loving it, coming back, and then getting more and more involved. That’s how our events work. If you participate enough – eventually we hire you!

Over the years there have been many thousands of people who have spoken with us by picking up the mic, holding a video camera, heckling, making things, collaborating with and inspiring us, or challenging us to do new things.

Listed below are some of our more frequent and recent hosts and operatives, but the point is this: we are always looking for people with new skills, ideas and energy to bring to the mix. So if you love what we do, and would like to get involved – do!

Documentation is an always an overt and integral part of our events. We also have a long history of filming, photographing and editing performances, talks, exhibitions and workshops, from vox pops on the streets of Hornchurch to filming a 24 hour performance marathon at The Serpentine Gallery.

Through our work on facilitation and Talkaoke, we are experts in quickly gaining rapport, asking the right questions and taking an insightful angle on any issue. Our documentation can have a positive impact on the flow of workshops and events when we get involved in the conversation while filming.

Visit www.thepeoplefilm.co.uk  For examples of our work

Unlecture takes the standard lecture format and turns it inside out. Instead of an expert talking to an audience with a couple of questions at the end, Unlecture empowers the audience to actively participate and exchange their own expertise. It encourages open discussion and debate between people on specific subjects.

Our facilitators employ different techniques and tools depending on the demands of the participants and how to get the best out of a session. For example: Audiences can break out into different groups to tackle different areas of a subject, people can pitch ideas to a panel of experts, a game-show type atmosphere to allow a fun and competitive show, voting on various areas of a subject to see which is most popular.

Unlecture makes the most of the knowledge and ideas of a smart audience, creates a dynamic recording of the proceedings and can even be streamed live and remote participants invited to get involved in the discussion.

We also use our Heckle system which projects words and images onto a screen of what people are saying in order to keep a timeline record of what is being discussed. Participants with computers and smart phones can also send their own ideas and tweets to the screen.

Some of the organisations who have benefited from the Unlecture format have been Nandos, Tate, UCL, Arts Quest & Creative Edinburgh.

You can watch some highlights of Unlecture in action:  Talkaoke & Unlecture at Think Tank TATE and Manifesto for a Creative Britain.