As concerns around loneliness, digital fatigue and the decline of shared social spaces continue to grow, electronic music artist and researcher Jamie Reddington (Sound of Fractures) is exploring a simple question: can live music events be better designed for human connection?
On Saturday 27 June, his project Alone Together returns to London following a pilot in which 97% of attendees spoke to someone new and 89% reported making a meaningful connection. The live experiment explores whether music, memory and physical space can be intentionally designed to help strangers connect in an increasingly disconnected world.
Part exhibition, part live performance and part social experiment, Alone Together transforms a single room over the course of a day. Audiences move through a series of experiences combining ambient performances, visual installations, memory-sharing exercises and a headline live show.
The project builds on findings from the first Alone Together pilot, held in March 2026, which explored how music and memory can create conditions for meaningful conversations between strangers. Results from attendee surveys found:
97% spoke to someone new
89% made a meaningful connection they would not otherwise have made
92% said conversations felt more meaningful than at a typical event
95% felt the environment gave them permission to connect
47% attended alone
The pilot also found that memory-based prompts consistently generated deeper conversations than traditional icebreakers, suggesting personal storytelling may play an important role in helping people form connections in live environments.
“There’s no shortage of opportunities to be around people,” says Reddington. “What’s increasingly rare are spaces intentionally designed for connection. Alone Together is an experiment in what happens when music becomes the starting point for conversations rather than the thing that stops them.”
The Rich Mix edition expands the original concept into a full-day experience. Structured across three chapters, audiences are invited to engage with music not simply as entertainment, but as a trigger for memory, reflection and shared experience.
Throughout the day, the space evolves: ambient performances unfold across the afternoon, prompt cards invite conversations between strangers, and a collective memory wall grows as attendees contribute their own stories. Those memories then become part of the evening’s headline performance, turning the audience into active participants in the work itself.