From September I’ll be providing background support for Cornwall based sound artist Cat Lee Marr who’s working with Sound and Music on a project called The City Rings.
The City Rings involves young people from a school in Cornwall sharing sounds recorded in their local environment with young people from a school in Barcelona and vice versa. It’s based on a project run recently by composerPippa Murphy in Scotland and documented here .
The poetry of earth is never dead:
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
That is the Grasshopper’s–he takes the lead
John Keats, from “On the Grasshopper and Cricket”
In September I’ll be runnning an event help people to discover the many and varied sounds of grasshoppers and crickets. This is an event in two parts. On the first evening we will visit Orley Common just to the west of Ipplepen to listen to these insect musicians and make sound recordings of their songs. On the second evening we will take our sound recordings to the Aune Head Arts studio and, using audio software, make short sound compositions which will be published on the Aune Head Arts website.
Both evenings start at 7pm and will finish by 9:30pm. Booking is essential. Naturally, both crickets and grasshoppers sing best when the weather is warm and dry, and quite happily sing in the evening (indeed great green and dark bush crickets sing into the night). If the weather on 6 September is poor, we’ll reschedule.
For more details, visit http://www.auneheadarts.org.uk
Thanks to everyone who gave their time we ran a series of fascinating and enjoyable walks around Efford as part of celebrations of two years of community arts locally. Highlights included a trip to the Elephants Graveyard, stories of Effords last pub and Efford Fort.
View the day’s programme here (pdf 198Kb)
On 25 June I’ll be helping out with celebrations of Efford Take a Part community arts project by supporting a series of creative walks to reveal the hidden aspects of this wonderful Plymouth community perched high up above the River Plym.
More details, including about our walk up from Plymouth Arts here.
All in all this overnight walk proved quite an experience, one which still resonates. At face value the notion of walking through the night is a simple one. But, as we moved from the dusk gloom through into the dark proper and out into the morning glow we also moved from our pasts and futures into the present. In part this was due to growing fatigue. In part it was due to the necessity for focus and concentration as we felt our way through the dark without the aid of torches. But from busy solar worlds we slipped gradually into the night, and to a quiet appreciation of both each others companty and the place through which we passed.
Saturday 28 May to Sunday 29 May 2011, Dartington Estate, Devon
For this Aune Head Arts event I’ll be working with artist Elly Stevens to take people on an overnight journey to discover the sounds and voices of the night. The event will start with a sit to listen to the dusk chorus of bird song, identifying the many and varied voices that amplify the landscape with the setting sun. With the final song we will then embark on a slow walk round the estate; a combination of playful exploration, shared stories, and times for still quiet listening at different places. We will return to our starting point before dawn to celebrate the birds as they awaken and greet the day. As the sun rises, we’ll share a lovely breakfast!
This is part of a series of events called Flittermice and Hoots that focus on the natural world at dusk and dawn
More details and booking information here
Like ourselves, birds are very vocal creatures. In spring their songs and calls are everywhere, enlivening our woods, hedges and fields. But what are they doing? Why are they singing? And who is singing?
These are just some of the questions we will be answering on this Wildwise overnight camp. We’ll also take time to experience both the dawn chorus, one of the great natural wonders, and to learn how to identify a range of birds from their songs and calls. And everyone will have the opportunity to take time out to listen quietly to the sounds of the natural world, a simple yet often surprisingly powerful experience.
Times – 4pm Saturday – 11am Sunday
Full details here
Yesterday evening Simon Persighetti and myself took 21 keen sound adventurers on a tour of Plymouth’s real and imagined musical history. This was our contribution to the Second International Research Forum on Guided Tours and was a repeat of the walk we did for the Ambulation show last autumn.
The majority of sounds and conversations are now online and available via Radio Aporee. Simply click on one of the red dots to listen. As mentioned previously this builds on work last years work with Efford Take a Part. I will also be working with the community in June to help support local people to devise and deliver their own tours of the estate as part of a retrospective of arts projects carried out over the past couple of years.
The recordings of the children at High View talking about their school are now complete, and I’m now working on indexing and editing them ready for uploading to Radio Aporee. The children were great and very talkative, so I have 2hrs of audio to drawn from!
There’s a piece in the Plymouth Herald about the project here.
Many thanks to Gem Ward for her time and help in school.
