4: Outcomes and impacts
4.1: Impact on approach/activities of ARC team
Finding the Story Arc’s most immediate and significant impacts have been experienced within the ARC team itself. This is a result of the researchers’ embedded role as ‘critical friends’ (see 2.2), as well as their provision of summary insights from the confidential interviews (2.3). In March 2025, SSB conducted one-to-one, online review interviews with members of the ARC team. Selected comments are cited below to evidence the claims made.
4.1.1: From 'buyers' to 'partners'
The most obvious sign of the researchers’ impact was the ARC team’s decision, in the autumn of 2024, to abandon its established language of ‘buyers’ and ‘sellers’ (in reference to prospective partners from the business and farming communities, respectively). Instead, the terms ‘business partner’ and ‘delivery partner’ were adopted. This shift of language, directly informed by feedback from MH’s interviews (see 3.3 above), was symptomatic of a wider learning process within the ARC team.
Prior to the researchers’ involvement with ARC, suggests Jonathan Moxon (LCC), ‘we had probably not been thinking enough about who needed talking to and how.’ Much attention had been devoted to the technical aspects of NFM delivery and green financing, but comparatively little to making the case for support. The unexamined assumption, suggests Nick Milsom (Aire Rivers Trust) was ‘we’ve got this idea and why wouldn’t you pay for it?’
According to Dan Hird, of Nature Finance (green-financial advisor to ARC), the project team had not anticipated that the scheme’s innovative nature would create a need for a role specifically geared towards engaging potential partners: ‘we’d developed the business and commercial case for ARC, but I don’t think we’d appreciated that that approach might not work for everyone in a case like this—because the offer is so novel’. Luke Wellock, the freelance sustainability specialist brought onto the ARC team for this purpose, concurs that ‘there’s nothing else like ARC, it’s unique! But that makes it a really complicated sell’. LW points outs that climate resilience, as opposed to carbon mitigation, is still an unfamiliar concept to many.
Dialogue and relationship-building are thus of critical importance in bringing partners on board. ARC project manager Rob Horsley (Rivers Trust) suggests that, by emphasising such questions, the researchers brought ‘a better balance to the team’ and ‘helped to crystallise a different approach to how you engage an audience.’
4.1.2: Benefits of listening
The researchers’ ‘critical listening’ role within ARC meetings was particularly valued by team members. MH offered a consistent presence in weekly meetings, and by listening for nuance, was able to point out emergent issues or questions as they arose (as per the LEAF method). LW was struck by MH’s ability ‘to stand back from the detail and then play it back. He’ll identify the key points.’ ‘The listening has really helped,’ JM concurs.
Because he was focused on attentive listening rather than salesmanship, MH also helped to keep attention focused on the need to build sustainable relationships, ‘rather than falling back into a task-based exercise’ of asking for money (RH). Keith Davie (Environment Agency) suggests that the researchers helped maintain ‘focus on the long game’: if ARC is seeking to secure contributions on a sustained, annual basis, ‘it can’t just be a cash grab’ (KD).
Key findings from MH’s independent interviews have also been valuable for the ARC team, in understanding what prospective partners might need or benefit from. Importantly, this has been achieved this without compromising the identities of respondents: ‘He’s managed the confidentiality aspects well, even while he has become fully involved’ (RH).
4.1.3: Focus on storytelling
By listening carefully, the researchers have also helped to identify appropriate ways for the ARC team to ’tell the story’ of the initiative to various different audiences. ‘The emphasis on the storytelling from both of you is powerful,’ KD notes, ‘not just in your performance piece but as a thread running through the whole process.’
RH concurs that, ‘from a Rivers Trust perspective it’s been really useful to see [this approach in action]. Prior to this, we wouldn’t have had the vocabulary to say “this is about storytelling.” But now we’re very much more about the story. That’s coming strongly from the project team now, it’s part and parcel of the journey.’ RH further notes that the approach to storytelling modelled by the researchers is ‘not just about comms’, in the sense of identifying a one-way sales pitch. Rather, there is a focus is on tailoring conversations to the audience in question: ‘You’ve got to bring in that sense of, “how can I help this person see it from this point of view.” It’s putting yourself in the shoes of other people, putting your virtual reality goggles on’ (RH).
RH adds that both he and colleague Dan Turner have fed back to the Rivers Trust that this narrative-based approach needs to become a more important part of their work, in future. Similarly, JM notes that he has modified his own approach to prospective partners in response to the LEAF method.
4.1.4: Fundraising
The researchers’ role within the ARC team was only indirectly concerned with fundraising, and it is thus impossible to quantify the value of their contribution in monetary terms. Nevertheless, LW believes that the researchers ‘can take some of the credit’ for ARC’s achievements to date. When interviewed in March 2025, LW was finding that approximately 20% of conversations with prospective business partners were converting into a ‘sale’. This is, in his experience, a ‘surprisingly good hit rate’ for a complex pitch of this sort. Yet supporters are being won over ‘person by person’, LW believes, because of the ARC team’s commitment finding the right ‘storytelling’ frame for each new context.
4.2: Performance presentation
The researchers’ creative devising process (2.4) resulted in the development of a new participatory performance, titled Inundated. This initiative has been enthusiastically supported by the ARC team: ‘We’ve got to think of new ways of engaging people,’ notes DH, ‘and I’m really proud that this is part of the offer.’
Developed in collaboration with director-dramaturg Si Brewis, Inundated was written by SSB using material derived from MH’s interview notes.(2) It is also performed by the two researchers, to maximise flexibility in delivery. The participatory aspects of the piece were developed through test performances in December 2024 and February 2025, with guest audiences drawn from the ARC team and other relevant associates.
Owing to delays in the formal launch of ARC as a CIC, Inundated was not presented publicly during the Finding the Story Arc project period. It will, however, be presented as part of the project’s ‘Next Steps’ (see 5 below).
​2 In cases where retelling of a respondent’s story might render them personally identifiable, written permission to use that story was sought from the relevant individual.
4.3: Written outputs
In addition to this final project report, the researchers produced an interim report for the ARC team (August 2024), and a summary report for our funders.
We have also developed a Guide to Creative Engagement, outlining the LEAF method, which is freely available elsewhere on this site. So too is the text of a co-authored conference paper that MH and SSB delivered at the annual gathering of TaPRA (Theatre and Performance Research Association), in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, September 2024. This piece reflects in more personal terms on the interview process described above.
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