An audience nobody had planned for

Text A: an original contemporary practice extract.

I wrote the station poem expecting commuters to read it while waiting for a train. The first responses came from children who passed the display on a school walk. Their teacher sent questions about two words I had assumed everyone knew. I kept the poem but added a small explanation beside it, where a reader could choose whether to use it.

The questions also made me notice how much local knowledge the poem borrowed. Its reference to the old ticket office meant little to people born after the building changed. We included an old photograph with the explanation. I asked the teacher whether the children could now follow the place being described. Their answers did not tell me whether the poem was good; they helped me see who could enter it.

Text B: an original contemporary practice extract.

The local-history podcast was planned for adults who remembered the bus depot. After its first episode, a youth worker asked to use it with a group who had never seen the depot open. The producer realised that descriptions of a familiar building had left its layout unexplained. A short introduction was recorded, and a diagram was added to the episode’s page.

The youth group then sent questions about what workers did in the rooms named by the speakers. The producer asked two former staff to explain those tasks in a further recording. The original interview was retained. The additional material supplied background for listeners whose interest did not come with the memories the programme had expected.

Both texts describe the ways the projects responded to new audiences.

What similarities do the ways the projects responded to new audiences share in these extracts? Use evidence from both texts to support your answer.