Guest blog from the Creative Accounting research team, reflecting on their recent collaboration with Talking Birds

On 18 May 2023, an unusual event took place at the recently restored Draper’s Hall, a historic building on Bayley Lane in the Cathedral Quarter of Coventry, built in 1832. Eleven professional accountants gathered for a business-style dinner with canapes, drinks and a three-course meal. However, the aim of the event was not to engage in normal accounting business and networking, in fact quite the opposite.

Sent to Coventry, the tongue-in-cheek title of the evening that plays on the relevance of the accounting profession, had been organised by academic researchers from the Centre for Business in Society (CBiS) at Coventry University who are interested in how arts and performance-based methods might engage, provoke and open up the thinking of business leaders. The inspiration for this came from the work of Nick McGuigan, an accounting professor at Monash University, Australia, whose research has focussed on the enhancement of educational programs for accountants and business professionals and on using the arts to generate a new language of accountability and develop integrative mindsets.

Nick joined the Coventry University research team comprising Alessandro Merendino and Maureen Meadows from CBiS and Nick Henry and Scott deLahunta from the Institute for Creative Cultures to form Creative Accounting. Creative Accounting intentionally works at discipline and practice-based edges to offer senior professionals unique perspectives, ways of engaging with a problem and immersive learning experiences to explore their integrative thinking capabilities and broaden their mindsets. The interdisciplinary team had the idea to stage a dinner for a dozen senior accountants in an artistic and thought-provoking setting such as an art gallery or historic estate. The discussion during dinner would be focussed on two key topics known to be challenging but crucial for the accounting profession to come to grips with: sustainability and use of digital technologies. In order to stimulate and encourage the dinner guests to discuss and debate these two challenging topics, artists would be commissioned to facilitate the evening in a creative, playful and provocative way. 

The research team began in January with selecting the date, finding the right venue, engaging with the accounting bodies to find senior accountants who would be invited to participate in this research project, and seeking the right artists to join the project. Talking Birds was recommended to the team, and with their focus on “access, human connection, social and ecological responsibility” they seemed like the perfect fit! After inspiring meetings with Co-Artistic Director Janet Vaughan, it became clear they were indeed the right fit for the project. By now the date and venue had been decided, so Janet and her colleagues began immediately to work on the setting and schedule for the evening. Using the terms of theatre, this would be considered the scenography and the script. Nick and Alessandro networked through the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW), the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) and the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA), to find the ideal group, five women and six men, who agreed to join the research project and to attend the dinner. They would take part in a short pre-event interview to gauge their expectations and prime them for the two key topics.

To prepare for the evening, Janet had conceived the idea of mycelium as something that could be materially present in the space as well as a way of thinking critically about sustainability. She engaged the mycelium (mushroom) artist Lisa Franklin to install an interactive experience in one of the rooms at Drapers’ Hall and provide mushrooms to integrate into the dinner table decorations. Freelance actor Joshua Patel came on board to function as Master of Ceremonies and illustration artist Camille Aubry from Bristol was commissioned to provide a real time recording of the evening. Comprehensive film and audio documentation of the evening was organised by Spencer James of Fresh, a Coventry based media team. The eleven guests arrived on time and the drinking, eating and conversing began. In the first room, they enjoyed the canapes and drinks, engaged in creating sound together with the interactive mushroom installation and listened together to “The Accountant” – a talking audio piece conceived by Talking Birds, set within a post-covid world, that imagines the accountant’s role beyond financial measurement and quantification. The guests then entered the dining room.

[L-R: The interactive sonic mushroom installation by Lisa Franklin; Joshua Patel greets the participants at the entrance; Camille Aubry live illustrating; Spencer James and Fresh documentation. Photo Credits: Alessandro Merendino]

Arranged around the table were questions as prompts, but as they began their three-course meal, the guests did not need much prompting to begin discussing a range of issues and concerns. As experts speaking to other experts in their field, they spoke openly and candidly about different aspects of the profession that concerned them with the key topics (sustainability and digital) threading through these. Nick McGuigan joined the dinner table, while the other researchers remained in the observation room which had been set up by Spencer’s Fresh team. Don’t worry! Ethical approvals had been obtained from all the guests. As everyone warmed to each other and the discussion the time rushed by and, in the end, the two hours scheduled for the evening seemed far too short! On their way out, all were invited to leave comments in writing on the tablecloth, and a few short video interviews captured participant engagement.

[Top row L-R: The entrance to Drapers’ Hall; The table setting with mushrooms, name tags and questions; Guests exploring the interactive sonic mushroom installation. Middle row L-R: Guests exploring the interactive sonic mushroom installation; Guests experiencing the audio piece ‘The Accountant’; Fresh Media documentation centre. Bottom row L-R: Table setting with mushrooms, moss and prompt questions; The table setting after the event with questions recorded on the table cloth; Janet, Josh and Lisa, Talking Birds. Photo Credits: Alessandro Merendino]

The Creative Accounting research team now has a lot of collected data to analyse and documentation to study, and follow up interviews are taking place with each accountant dinner guest. Initial impressions and feedback from the participants so far have been that this kind of experience, with thought-provoking artistic contributions, can support important and profound discussions to take place for the accounting profession. This project brought together artists, academics and business professionals from across three of the UK’s largest accounting associations to explore methods and tools for promoting integrative thinking in accounting. Further insights should be forthcoming from the collected data and documentation, and the plan is to organise future similar events, taking what can be learned from this one to inform and improve them.

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Janet Vaughan, Co-Artistic Director of Talking Birds has also written about this collaboration and the process of creating the event, and you can read her blog here.