Immersive Audio Unlearning (IAU) is a research-based educational methodology developed by Sérgio Xavier, which uses performative means and techniques to stimulate radical thinking.

The audience is invited to close their eyes and immerse themselves in a soundscape in which a carefully crafted story is narrated live. The stories performed generate problematizing portraits of reality that raise critical lenses on specific themes.

IAU is particularly well-suited to problematizing complex structural issues that are commonly perceived as difficult, uncomfortable, controversial, or polarizing, making it ideal for engaging with issues such as racism, Eurocentrism, colonialism, feminism, patriarchy, inequality, populism, or the far right.

The experience provided by IAU is in some ways similar to the cinematic experience, with the important exception that, unlike cinema, it is up to each member of the audience to produce the visualization of the story being told. The listener is given the agency to freely put images in the sonic proposal offered and is given creative ownership, often in the hands of third parties, as is the case in many performing arts. IAU sessions are an exercise in which each person simultaneously makes and watches a film.

IAU registers itself as a radical education initiative, conceptualized on the basis of invaluable theoretical contributions such as those of Paulo Freire, Ivan Illich, Henry Giroux or bell hooks. IAU creates a safe environment for radical thinking, i.e. for reflecting on the radical problems - and solutions - observed in our societies. Individual positions about contemporary social conditions are re-evaluated. Ideas, concepts, and visions that were previously formed and perhaps stabilized are unlearned. Personal paths and collective utopias are imagined to respond to the challenges of the issues raised.

After 9 experimental iterations over 13 months of development, IAU is a consolidated practice that shows excellent results as a tool for social education and community intervention. The acceptance and interest that IAU has generated among different social actors at local and international level, has shown great potential for its future development and adaptation to different intervention contexts with a wide range of communities.