When Invisible Flock first launched Bring the Happy in 2012, it was the result of a two-month stint in Leeds’ Kirkgate Market, where they asked people to submit their moments or memories of happiness – rated on a scale of 1-10 – and then collated them digitally and via clear rods of corresponding heights on a physical map of the city. The show they produced at the end of it, in which those memories were recited, projected onto screens and turned into songs performed by Leeds-based band Hope & Social, conveyed – so I’m told – an essence of the city, a distillation of its personality and the people who lived there.

Now touring that concept, Invisible Flock landed last week at Exeter’s Met Office following two weeks in a disused city centre shop. Makers Ben Eaton, Victoria Pratt and Richard Warburton, along with various volunteers, created a welcoming space that encouraged conversation and interaction; the installation itself, as it became packed with rods, seemed to offer an interesting insight into the topography of happiness around the city, although – as I discovered myself when choosing which moment to submit – many positive memories were tinged with pathos.

It’s that constant interplay between happiness and sadness that comes across most clearly in the performance, which is really much more of an ‘event’, a bit like a cross between a wedding reception and a recruitment seminar for a positive-thinking therapy programme. And although there are Exeter-specific memories and songs – including shopping trips along the High Street with Grandpa, taking tea in Deller’s Cafe, and a joyously rousing number ‘for all the babies born in Waitrose’, which was built in 2011 on the site of the old maternity hospital – the nature of touring such a project, with a necessarily shorter time spent in each location than for the initial Leeds show, means that the content is drawn from all the places visited so far, including the original production. As a result, it feels less like a representation of Exeter’s emotional landscape than a snapshot of national nostalgia.

Similarly, the structure – an at times fairly frenzied feast of flashing lights and music, projections and pronouncements – leaves little room for reflection on what ‘happiness’ might mean. Memories come and go, uttered or sung, printed or projected, and while there is laughter (concerning a talking cat called Janet, particularly) and an undeniable poignancy in the retelling of anonymous recollections of the obviously important moments in people’s lives – a bit like coming upon a room filled with the possessions of someone now absent – I’m unsure whether this format allows for an interrogation of why those particular moments resonate.

Happily, though, Invisible Flock and Hope & Social – whose upbeat, grin-inducing music is one of the standout elements of the event – create a positive environment in which interaction is encouraged but resolutely unforced: we are gently urged to waltz with a stranger, to play the kazoo, or lob a glow stick, but at no point are we made to feel uncomfortable for not. It’s hard to say why the energy in the room was somewhat flat on the night I went – it’s not for want of trying on the performers’ part – but the location (a blandly corporate room) added nothing to the enterprise, despite being festooned with the paraphernalia associated with celebration (balloons, flowers, wine, floating candles). Having said that, I hear that the audience on the second night completely gave itself over to the party atmosphere”¦

Conversations after the performance (which included wondering what Forced Entertainment would do with the material) segued into discussions about ‘big heart’ entertainment – such as charity telethons and Saturday night-style feel-good extravaganzas – and the enthusiastic caring and sharing that it both engenders and perpetuates. While Bring the Happy might not interrogate happiness, perhaps it speaks volumes about how we, as a populace – facing the crushing effects of economic disparity, inequality and austerity – can be consoled by nostalgia, and our individual anger pacified by being presented with the opportunity to clap along.