‘All stories, all stages’ Insights from the AKO Storytelling Institute's 2024-2025 Fellowship

“Impact Production is the storytelling about the storytelling... You can’t just make the thing. You have to design the scaffolding for how it moves through the world.”

Cressida Kocienski, UAL AKO Storytelling Institute Fellow 2024-2025

Finding, engaging, and holding an audience is a perennial challenge for creative projects. The fragmentation of the entertainment landscape over the past fifteen years has changed the entertainment business models and made audience engagement even more important for artists and creatives.

Achieving strong engagement with projects aiming for social impact or an issue-based outcome is an even more pressing challenge. For many practitioners, making their work is only half the battle.  Ensuring it reaches the right people – and makes a difference when it does – is an altogether different ambition with its own set of dilemmas.

At UAL’s AKO Storytelling Institute, we have found that the toolkit of Impact Production can provide a robust solution to this problem. With its origins in documentary filmmaking, but with parallels in creative producing across different disciplines, impact production can provide a pathway for all creative projects to connect with their intended audience and drive real-world change.

For two years we have run a Training Fellowship in Impact Production bringing together talented practitioners from across creative industries and disciplines, to help us explore how storytelling can drive social impact.

In our latest Fellowship research report we tracked the cohort and their four tutors as they developed impact plans in their respective disciplines.  What we found was particularly inspiring.

A fellowship testing new ground

To explore this potential, this year the Institute’s 2024/25 Fellowship brought together a deliberately diverse cohort: filmmakers, podcasters, theatre-makers, game designers and visual artists. Their projects ranged from a multiplayer digital game to a school-age music and video project, a public art installation and several feature documentaries. The aim was simple but ambitious: to see what happens when you introduce impact production to different disciplines.

Many Fellows found that while the terminology was new, the tools of impact producing felt intuitively familiar to them. Cressida, a multidisciplinary artist, described impact producing as “the storytelling about the storytelling,” adding, “You can’t just make the thing. You have to design the scaffolding for how it moves through the world.”

Marion, a podcaster, said it; “allowed me to frame the podcast in a way that lets people know it’s part of a broader change project.” Alison, a TV producer, even imagined applying it sector-wide; “TV as a whole needs an impact campaign, especially in the face of spiraling ratings and competition from YouTube and the streaming giants.”

Adapting the toolkit; protecting the story

The central finding from the Fellowship was that impact producing isn’t one-size-fits-all. Its benefits shift depending on the nature of the project and when it’s introduced, and this adaptability is precisely what protects the story at the heart of the work.

For me, as a Researcher with a background in documentary impact production, where budgets and timescales are sometimes restrictively fixed, recognising this quality of flexibility in working with Impact Storytelling in different mediums was very exciting. The projects I have worked on have been almost exclusively focused on the climate crisis (such as Future Council, Regenerating Australia, and A Fire Inside). The potential of translating these skills to projects on the same topic in different disciplines opens a world of possibilities.

Two broad categories of creative practice were identified by the Fellows and tutors, defined by distinct approaches to project creation rather than being tied to any specific mediums. Whilst the benefits of impact producing were felt in both categories, these advantages came through at different stages of production.

Flexible projects – are where the artist is open to form [the medium or style] being influenced by its intended impact - weaving impact thinking into their earliest stages. Mel, a theatre-maker and game designer, described; “making aesthetic and creative choices in dialogue with impact,” and starting that process by asking: “What conversation do you want to have? What change do you want to see?” Game designer Zoe noted that bringing impact in at the start is “the right time for those conversations to be happening,” helping shape the entire project.

Fixed projects – are those that follow a more format-driven creative process and that often need substantial planning. This type find additional benefits of impact producing later in production, once the creative form is settled. Documentary filmmaker Mos explained that engaging with impact planning later in his production “was helpful because nothing’s really changing” at that point—allowing him to build a clearer campaign without constraining the film.

In all the Fellows work, we saw that impact production, when aligned with each project’s natural rhythm and process, supports rather than stifles creativity. Early impact planning can clarify purpose and support funding applications; later planning can sharpen outreach and partnerships. The key is making intentional choices about when to engage with it.

For Marion, a podcast producer, the tools she was taught in the Fellowship training allowed her to develop a robust impact campaign for the new season of her podcast. Her podcast, Black Earth, celebrates Black female environmentalists and innovators in the climate space. With her detailed knowledge of her project, its purpose, and its audience Marion was able to build out a body of resources to help facilitate the agency of that audience in addressing climate challenges in their own communities.

Creative co-benefits

By placing audiences and communities at the heart of planning, impact producing creates a feedback loop: creative choices shape engagement strategies, and engagement insights shape creative choices. That reciprocity not only strengthens campaigns but can make the work itself more resonant.

Cressida saw its strength in “forcing [us] to be accountable to the impact of [our] work instead of just making a product and then skipping off.” This accountability is not about softening artistic edges but about grounding work in authentic relationships. Ben, one of the tutors, reminded Fellows that “the impact goal of your project is the lighthouse that will keep it focused.” The impact goal of a work is a guide that helps creators orient their decisions without losing their voice.

Moving stories through the world

In an era of audience fragmentation and diminishing budgets, impact production offers artists and creative teams a way to navigate that noise without losing their vision. It’s not about turning every project into an advocacy tool; it’s about making intentional choices for how your story travels, who it reaches, and what it might spark. Far from diluting creativity, it can sharpen your story’s relevance and help it land with the people who matter most.

The AKO Storytelling Institute’s Fellowship demonstrates that impact production can benefit all creative projects, but also that each must adapt it to its own process and priorities.

As the discourse around Impact Production develops, a big learning for all of us at the Institute when working with this year’s Fellowship was that this flexibility is the key to opening-up impact production to a range of practices.  As the Fellows demonstrated through their projects and observations, setting creative storytelling against impact production is a false dichotomy. Rather, the questions and provocations necessitated by impact production strengthens and refines your story.

Whether you’re making a podcast, a public artwork or a feature film, the question is the same: what change do you want to create, and how will your story move through the world?

Find out more about the tools of Impact Production

If you are a creative practitioner or artist keen to make social impact with your work, then Impact Storytelling techniques and tools can help.

To explore the AKO Storytelling Fellowship report findings in depth, and discover practical tools for your own practice, read our full report All Stories, All Stages and visit the AKO Storytelling Institute’s website for more resources on impact production.

If you’d like to find out more about the AKO Storytelling Institute’s Fellowship programme, visit the Experimentation page on our website.

Lastly - for news, tips and recommendations on all things Impact Storytelling, sign up to the AKO Storytelling Insitute newsletter.