This Is Our Time: The Greatest Show On Earth : Part 1, The Music.

Part one, reflections on a three day visit to a six month Expo which leaves a lifetime legacy and the belief that anything is possible ...

Dear you …

I write this to you from Nottingham, UK, after visiting Expo2020 in the culmination of its 182 days and many days before that in its preparation to pioneer in the world of experience.

This will be the first of a series of newsletters, which will take and examine the different parts of Expo2020 experience.

I can promise you that the letters you are about to read will be a bit like a series of love letters.

If you’ve visited the Expo, you’ll know where I’m coming from, because once you’ve visited, you’re not the same again and your creative mind and heart are changed forever.

Despite being a hopeless romantic, my thoughts will be filled with insight and observation.

I am an experience and experiential consultant and designer, who puts the human at the centre of all decision making. I combine this with shrewd commercial and sector understanding and an obsession to pave the way in creating unique human experiences through understanding human behaviours and motivations. Enough about that though ...

Expo2020 raised the bar in experience, and some.

The standard has been set for the future of human experience and all we can do is rise to meet and exceed it.

This piece will concentrate on what I call the audio ‘heartbeat’ of the expo: the official Expo2020 theme song; 'This Is Our Time'

I want to set the scene for those of you who haven’t attended and to make the hairs stand up on the back of your neck for those of you who have attended, I want to rouse the emotion you felt the first time you heard the Expo2020 official song. And, for anyone designing mass scale global events, it provides a lesson in individual and collective experience, both of which need to be achieved.

Music impacts us all. No matter who we are or where we come from. It is the highway of shared experiences and it unites us in a shared goal through its lyrics, message and context.

I believe that the official song was the audio 'heartbeat' of Expo2020 experience.

Expo2020 brought together 192 countries and different cultures, beautiful and unique cultures from all around the world. The Expo song brought together the entire world, despite cultural difference, through an optimistic and heroic mission-led composition.

It provided the conditions for every human listening to become the hero of the story in pursuit of the Expo mission ‘Connecting Minds, Creating The Future’.

Every listener and guest had the ability to become the torchbearer of the quest ahead as the magic and experience of Expo unfolded. I will remember the song and its lyrics for a lifetime.

If you have 4 minutes 19 seconds, I urge you to listen to the soundtrack here:

If you don't have time, then I believe that more than anything you need to make the time,

Here is a snapshot of the lyrics:

Follow me, one voice, one family.

The world as it stands in the palm of our hands,

It’s our time.

Take a seat, to the greatest show you’ll ever see,

We’ve come so far, but the future is ours,

To decide what we need.

We’ve got to all come together,

Let’s join our voice, it’s now or never,

We are the next generation to strive for a new day.

This is our time.

This is the moment we have to decide

It’s time to stand up and vow, to be what the world needs now.

This is our time,

This is the moment we open our eyes.

If we can dare to believe, to wake up and find.

This day,

This is our time.

The song was played around the Expo at various moments and it is a soundtrack that I believe the entire world needs to hear. I am a musician myself, I play the piano, therefore music is a big factor for me in experiences that I both design and experience.

Musically it had impeccable lyrics, transitions, chords and technical components.

In an Expo however, when you are reaching millions of people from different and diverse backgrounds, of all ages AND following a Global Pandemic, music is far more important than only the words and beautiful notation and composition. It is central, the audio heartbeat of everything that Expo stands for as it unites people in the shared goal of the entire experience.

‘Connecting Minds, Creating The Future’.

It is impossible for me to think of any other soundtrack that could have set the tone for Expo2020. It instantly makes me cry when I hear it and recall the life changing experience that was the Expo.

We know the impact that music has on the brain where it literally changes the brain in its release of neurochemicals that play a role in dopamine increase, our elevated or decreased mood and the ability to elicit physical responses that enhance an experience, aesthetic enjoyment and entertainment, BUT, it is important to think about how the song was a central anchor as a means of communication on both an individual and collective basis.

The song will have made impact and communicated with each individual listener, as it did with me, based on my own life experiences. Everyone who listened to that soundtrack came to it from a different context and experience journey and so the meaning derived from it will have been different in all manner of ways on an individual basis. Collectively however, It united us (one voice, one family) … I can fondly recall every smiling and laughing face I engaged with as we listened to the song collectively at various points throughout the Expo.

Music has the ability to elevate experiences to entirely different stratospheres when it comes to mass events. Hero songs should be carefully composed and considered so that each individual has the ability to feel like a torchbearer about to embark on their own personal mission and also the collective mission.

Expo2020 song created the conditions both collectively and personally. It created a meaningful individual experience and a profound collective emotional shared experience.

In experience, music is the heartbeat, it transcends difference through culture and creates share meaning for the mission ahead.

Brilliantly executed at Expo2020.

I’ll see you again next time, I have too many thoughts for a single newsletter, so I’ll follow up again soon.

Yours, in experience.

Victoria.

P.S: I’d love to know any experiences you have had where you fondly and vividly recall your experience as a guest through the music or soundtrack associated with the experience.