Current Projects

A Space for Sound -The Arches Sound Project

A Space for Sound – The Arches Sound Project is a listening space located in the historic centre of Newcastle University. The space brings together temporary sound pieces from a range of practitioners and researchers working across the University.

This series of temporary sound installations will bring our Arches to life throughout the autumn term – find out what you can expect as you walk through campus.

Each piece will be played on the hour, with the first iteration at 6am and the final iteration at 10pm.

Located in the historic centre of the campus, close to the Students Union and the Armstrong Building, the Arches are an iconic part of our city centre campus.

In early 2022, the Institute for Creative Arts Practice invited colleagues and students to submit their ideas as part of a programme of sound installations.

The response was fantastic, and the resulting programme – which launches next week - will bring together and present diverse sound-based work/research from a range of practitioners and researchers working across the University as well as projects with our external collaborators and partners

The project team includes Professor Richard Talbot, Mel Whewell and Mel Robson from the Institute for Creative Arts Practice. Technical aspects of the project are supported by PhD students from the School of Arts & Cultures (Music) and includes David de la Haye and Stuart Arnot.

The Humanities Research Institute and the Institute for Social Science are also partners in the project.

Programme: January - May 2024

May 13th - 19th

Chant and Moan
Composed and Performed by Adam Soper (PhD Candidate in Music, School of Arts and Cultures)

This work combines environmental sounds with composed digital instruments and improvised acoustic guitar. In featuring environmental sounds, the work intends to reintegrate the everyday with musical production but, more significantly, it refuses to separate the mundane from the sublime, with sounds of bin lorries, rain, and musical instruments being all viewed as equal collaborators in the work. Mistakes in the performance are preserved throughout, promoting a process and space of creation over a polished product.

Chant and Moan attempts to uncover knowledge through the dual modes of improvisation and repetition, along with a 'tuning oneself' to the outside world (as opposed to the frequent 'shutting out' of the world around found in many musical recorded products). This can be observed both in the environmental sounds, and in the guitar, which was 'tuned to' the performance space prior to recording. The improvisation is itself an exploration of this unknown tuning system, a losing and finding of musical material in the familiar-yet-unknown.

This work is a single work selected from an online archive (named Fruit of the Vine) that forms Adam Soper's PhD portfolio. Each element of this archive deals with questions concerning the observation of ritual, improvisation, and attempting to both reveal and conceal occluded knowledge through the process of musical creation.

The work installed in the Arches can also be found and re-listened to here: https://adamsoper.bandcamp.com/album/chant-and-moan

Adam welcomes any questions/comments about the work, or to discuss collaborations. a.soper@ncl.ac.uk

Visit the composer’s website

January 22nd - 29th

A Song for Ella Grey
Music and words from the opening of the new stage production of A Song For Ella Grey by David Almond, adapted for the stage by Zoe Cooper and with music by Emily Levy.

A Song for Ella Grey is a retelling of the Orpheus myth set in Newcastle, starting on a grassy slope outside the Cluny pub and travelling up the Northumberland Coast. It follows a group of teenagers as they navigate love, loss and growing up. Zoe is a playwright and Senior Lecturer in the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics at Newcastle University. Emily Levy the composer for the production says she has been influenced by the folk songs and sounds of Northumberland. Drawing on the magic and mythical retelling of the myth the music in ‘A Song for Ella Grey’ serves as a through point from the ancient history of the beautiful coast, the lives of modern teenagers and folk traditions from the North East. The play opens at Northern Stage (1-14^th of February) before touring nationally. A Song for Ella Grey - Pilot Theatre (pilot-theatre.com)

You can hear more about the play on Front Row, 30^th of January, 2024 available BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, Jonny Greenwood of The Smile, the Artes Mundi prize winner (it is the second item, so about 15 minutes in)

Programme: October - November 2023

October 2nd-8th

Working for Scotswood
During winter 2022/2023, the adult volunteers and staff at Scotswood Garden worked on restoring the large pond that is home to rare newts and other wildlife. The garden is a restorative space and an educational resource for the local community.

In our cities, much of the work we do makes us sick, and makes the planet and our communities poorer rather than richer. We urgently need to find ways of living in cities that nourish and protect us and our communities, helping us grow with rather than against nature.

The “Working for Scotswood” research project is funded by The Catherine Cookson Foundation and the Global Urban Research Unit, both at Newcastle University.

The research was co-produced by staff and volunteers at Scotswood Garden: Keith Bosomworth, Sean Clay, Leanne Defty, Andy Downey, Keith Gordon, Jenny Hopper, Duran
Hunt, Ryan Keenan, Jean Matovu, Claire Metcalfe, Gillian Milne, Robert Milne, Clarice Ngangmeneu, Gilly Reid, Ken Thompson, Daniel Wansell, Paul Danher and Matthew Wilkinson.

Photography by Paul Danher, volunteer, Scotswood Garden. The research was led by Abby Schoneboom (Lecturer in Urban Planning, School of Architecture, Planning & Landscape) with help from student Eliza Chown (Stage 3, BA Urban Planning).

For more information about the project, contact: abigail.schoneboom@ncl.ac.uk

October 16th-22nd

One Minute

Poet Tara Bergin writes about the process of turning her short poem ‘The Seasons Dance’ into a sound piece for under the Arches
Hello. It may take you longer to read this description than it does to listen to the short piece it describes. Why is it never easy to write about the creative process? There are so many tangled threads, so much over-crowdedness, even behind a piece as condensed and controlled as this.

The poem ‘The Seasons Dance’ is the first of a poetic sequence called ‘Four Dances’ that features in my book Savage Tales (Carcanet, 2022)

The sequence was initially inspired by watching a documentary about the German dance choreographer Pina Bausch. Some of the dances in that film made a strong impression on me and I set about trying to describe them in poetic form.

But it was frustrating trying to transcribe a dance in words! After many failed attempts I realised that all of the ‘poeticising’ or lyrical flourishes on my part were ruining the harsh rigour, and the awkward, ordinary-theatrical tension of the dances themselves. I discovered that what I liked best was when I made the writing as flat as possible, almost like a set of instructions. A certain voice emerged: the speaker of the poems had a particular kind of stance: direct, immediate, yet also keeping us at a distance.

As I worked on the poems I began to see a new meaning hidden beneath the surface. My version of ‘The Seasons Dance’ became not simply a poem about the changing year, but also a poem about a span of an existence, from hope, to failure, to rising up again, fighting. With this in mind, when it came to making the poem into an audio piece, I wanted to create the sense of a poetic translation – one that starts to reveal meaning within the gaps and errors it generates.

Tara has collaborated on the production of this sound work with sound artist David de la Haye. His interest in music and sound is kaleidoscopic. Opportunities to support projects such as this allow him to explore his technical side. In this case he developed a 4-channel variation of the original stereo audio, adding depth and playing with the gaps in the text through aural relocation. David is undertaking a PhD in Music, researching freshwater soundscapes.

Find out more about David's work here: https://daviddelahaye.co.uk/

For more information about this work contact:
Tara Bergin

Senior Lecturer in Writing Poetry (Creative Writing)
School of English Literature, Language a& Linguistics

Newcastle University
tara.bergin@newcastle.ac.uk

November 13th-18th

Ordinary Light
A new soundwork by James Clay (PGR Music), is comprised of a week-long installation in the University Arches, as well as a series of live Carillon recitals performed by the City Carillonneur Jonathan Bradley. The installation, based on manipulated recordings of the Carillon bells, will be played all week in the Arches, while Jon will be performing four one-hour recitals of the piece (recital schedule below). During the recital slots, listeners are invited to walk freely between the Arches and the Civic Centre Gardens (across the road from the bottom of campus) to hear the two components of the work being played at the same time.

A pre-recital talk will be given by the composer (James Clay) and the performer (Jonathan Bradley) Armstrong Building 2.09, Monday 13th November, 13:00–13:45

Recital Schedule (Civic Centre Gardens)
Monday 13 November 14:00–15:00
Tuesday 14 November 19:00–20:00
Friday 17 November 18:00–19:00
Saturday 18 November 15:00–16:00

Programme: June - July 2023

June 19th-23rd

Sanctuaries of Sound (RES 01)
For Refugee Week 2023, a collaborative sound installation made by The Resonators - a collective of people with lived refugee experience, with West End Refugee Service, Skimstone Arts’ Claire Webster Saaramets' and artist Martin Heslop. Together they have been exploring the urban and natural soundscape of Newcastle, listening, field-recording and writing, to collectively compose this immersive multilingual piece. This is part of the 'Sanctuary Songs Festival' at the University, and is the first of an ongoing, evolving series of work. 'RES 02' will be a second installation in the Arches for the MSA conference in early July (more details to follow). 'RES 03' will be exhibited at the Ouseburn Festival on Jul 15th and 16th.

Programme: February - March 2023

February 13th-19th

Dawn Gardener
An old Zen story tells of a monk who asks “Without speaking, without silence, how can you express the truth?” In response, the master Fuketsu observes: “…The birds sing among innumerable kinds of fragrant flowers.” My piece Dawn Gardener adds tones played upon electric bass to the flowers that surround the outside of the Arches. Recordings of singing birds will also be installed there, and inside these recordings sound also the sounds of making recordings. Passing through the space beneath the Arches, or stopping for a moment, what can you observe? What is inside and what is out?

Jorge Boehringer, Composer, Sound Artist & Research Associate, School of Arts & Cultures

February 20th-26th

Active Listening, Personal Odyssey
This body of work autoethnographically explores how active listening democratises sound, through the lens of my own hearing impairment. It reflects my own listening practice as a coping mechanism and its wider applications, tracing a path through internal and external, micro and macro, sonic universes. Sound and music are separated only by the listener, and this project explores captured sound environments and musical responses to them to demonstrate how listening becomes composition. The goal is to encourage a guided mental state with a focus on a time-distorting understanding of listening that consolidates memory, absorption and anticipation.

Elliot Hayes-Clare, Sound Artist and PGR, School of Arts & Cultures

February 27th-March 5th

Basic Sound
Rob Blazey is a musician, artist and researcher whose PhD explores the methods and intentions of visual collage-artists (particularly Eduardo Paolozzi) and applies the unique affordances of their practices to various aspects of musical performance ecologies, including studio-based composition, instrument making, performance, sound-art and sculpture.

Basic Sound was created in response to Harriet Sutclffe’s sculpture ‘Single Form’ from her 2018 exhibition ‘Re-frame/ Re-model’. Sutcliffe’s work investigates the pioneering teaching methods of the ‘Basic Course’ devised and developed by artists Richard Hamilton and Victor Pasmore in the 50s and 60s at Newcastle University (with ideas and guest lectures contributed by other artists, including Paolozzi).

Blazey’s response to Sutcliffe’s work is made entirely from manipulated audio recordings of the steel sculpture, from the sounds of the metalworking processes leading to its realisation, to bowing and striking the finished piece.

For the original exhibition, three speaker assemblages were made entirely from woodwork studio off-cuts and reclaimed audio circuitry, adopting a material-led, collage-based approach employed by Paolozzi during development of the Basic Course. Exploring the potential for non-fixity within collage, the audio is composed of three separate inter-related elements of different looped lengths, allowing relationships and juxtapositions between the three to continually evolve throughout the piece’s duration.

Rob Blazey, Musician, Artist & PGR, School of Arts & Cultures

March 6th-12th

Traces
Traces brings voices that are rarely heard on Newcastle University’s campus into the symbolically and literally central space of the Arches. It’s the co-creation of artist Dr Kate Sweeney and mother and daughter Abigail Byron and Cheryl Byron, women of colour performers based in Newcastle. Traces records their reflections on the experience of working with feminist theatre company Open Clasp and its director Catrina McHugh MBE to make the theatre production Don’t forget the birds (2018), which explores the impact on their lives of time Cheryl spent in prison. The women’s voices capture the lived experience of familial intimacy traumatically ruptured by a prison sentence, and movingly evoke the rebuilding of that intimacy, a process vitally supported by their work with Open Clasp.

Kate Chedgzoy, Professor of Renaissance Literature, School of English Literature, Language & Linguistics, Dr Kate Sweeney, artist, Abigail Byron & Cheryl Byron, Open Clasp and its Artistic Director Catrina McHugh.

March 13th-19th

Inside Talks
An audio project consisting of 2 channel pieces. The two recordings are field recordings, each lasting 3 hours. The aim of the project is to reproduce the two sounds simultaneously to create an immersive sound installation within the iconic Arches of the Newcastle University campus. The first audio was recorded in Bologna in July 2021, without the participants knowing. The voices that emerge are those of 3 friends who meet again after a long period of time without seeing each other, who have decided to get together to make a spree. The boys are Italian and during the 3 hours they spend at home, before going out, they tell each other what has happened and what will happen in their lives. The second audio, audibly more monotonous, was recorded on a Sunday morning in January 2022. In this case, only one of the previous participants remains: the artist, who does not utter a single word. The audio focuses on the humming noises of the city of Newcastle. Positioned near the window, the microphone captures the noises of machines, strangers, footsteps, seagulls… The dualities of noise and silence, internal and external, spoken word and thought are the values on which the work reflects.

Francesco Bendini, Artist & former exchange student, Fine Art, School of Arts & Culturestrina McHugh.

March 20th-26th

Taal Yatra
Opera North has always been interested in the music of non-Western classical cultures. This is why this electrifying piece was commissioned. A shared curiosity to explore diverse voices underpins the exciting new collaboration between Opera North and Newcastle University.

“Taal Yatra means ‘journey of rhythm’, a spiritual journey. Each player performs solo, and then, slowly, all of the drums from these three different traditions come together, and we end up with all of us playing in a big crescendo. In Indian music we measure rhythm in taal, which are repeated cycles. The first beat of the taal, the sum, is always the centre point: that’s where all the excitement, the crescendos and the loud stuff comes; it’s also the place where everything dissolves and comes together again. The taal is what we improvise around in South Asian music. I based the recording on teen taal, a cycle of 16 beats, which is essentially a 4/4 rhythm. If I had said ‘teen taal’ to Sidiki and Arian I don’t think it would have meant much to them, yet they were able to pick up on it straight away, because rhythm is such a universal language. That’s the message of the piece, really. I played a lot of traditional tabla repertoire within the taal, and Sidiki and Arian drew on their own traditions. We were all on the same page and they contributed to it beautifully: there’s no better way to bring people together than with music!” - Shahbaz Hussain

Shahbaz Hussain with Arian Sadr and Sidiki Dembele, Musicians

Commissioned and produced by Opera North Projects

Programme – January to February 2023

Each piece will be played on the hour, with the first iteration at 6am and the final iteration at 10pm.

January 9th-15th

The Old Pottery Murmarations
The Old Pottery is a Scheduled Ancient Monument in Corbridge, a former family-owned fireclay pottery that produced a wide range of goods including firebricks, pipes and tiles, from the 1840s to 1930s. The complex includes two imposing bottle kilns, and houses a cottage, home to the Goodalls, who are currently devising possibilities for the site with the help of a team of architects, landscape architects…and listeners.

The Old Pottery is also our sonic laboratory where we are testing the different roles that listening and sounding can play in landscape design; from listening as a vehicle to unearth the identity of a place, to listening with non-human others and designing from an established kinship. The soundings included in this piece move us away from the familiar comforts of top-down mapping, planning and drawing, which, although useful tools for any spatial designer, can also provide a distance from the experiential aspects of a place. Instead, we work from an internal position, listening and sounding outwardly to narrate the Old Pottery’s story experientially. These experimental soundings neither document the site nor represent landscape proposals, rather, they are situated in between; speculations that helps us relate to the site and its inhabitants whilst we envisage potential futures.

Usue Ruiz Arana, lecturer in Landscape Architecture, School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape

Dan Hill, Research Assistant, School of Architecture, Planning & Landscape

January 16th-22nd
Everything Will Be Alright
A multi layered four channel audio installation in which the voices of my mother and I relay phrases of reassurance, in varying tones and volumes, from multiple directions. The footage is looped seamlessly.

I first created this piece in 2016, following the news that my Mum had been diagnosed with brain cancer. At the time I was studying a Fine Art Masters at Newcastle University. Each morning I would walk to the studio and there’d be a soundtrack of internal and external voices going through my head. Some of these voices were comforting, reminding me of how my Mum and I would try to reassure and encourage each other, but other sayings seemed ridiculous and inconsiderate; how a stranger could tell me that “Everything will be alright” even when they knew very little about my Mum’s circumstances? I became interested in the way that the same words can be interpreted completely differently depending on how they are spoken. Initially I recorded my own voice, and then asked my Mum if I could record her voice too. The recording session was a really emotional experience, and as I edited all the footage we didn’t know whether my Mum would be alive to hear it exhibited as a sound installation. I am delighted to say that she was able to attend the exhibition opening and is still very much alive and fighting like a trooper - a truly inspirational woman.

I am fascinated by the power of the context (both physical situation and temporal) to influence the interpretation of the work. I have since exhibited the artwork in a number of different contexts.

Helen Shaddock, Multidisciplinary Artist, Arts Facilitator and Newcastle University graduate (Fine Art Masters).

January 23rd-29th

Nightfall
40 minutes (looped) field sound recordings featuring Woodcock performing ‘roding’ courtship flight plus Nightjars ‘churring’ and calling.

Selections from around eight hours of recording over six nights at dusk in May and June 2021 in Slaley Forest and near Healey, Northumberland.

Woodcock have red listed UK conservation status due to severe declines in breeding numbers. During the roding display the male patrols just above tree height calling with strange squeaks and croaks. The bird is secretive and usually camouflaged within leaves on the forest floor. Counting flyovers by roding males is used to estimate population densities.

The Nightjar is amber listed and only occurs as a summer visitor in a few locations in the UK. The males emit a curious drawn-out churring sound that is unbird-like. They also have a high pitch call in flight. They are nocturnal and hunt for moths at dusk.

The recordings were made as part of my arts practice-based PhD considering what it is like to be a bird. In this work I am aiming to introduce others to an unfamiliar bird sounds and environments that may help us to contemplate avian worlds.

Jim Lloyd, PhD Candidate in Fine Art, School of Arts & Cultures

January 30th-February 5th

Passing Through

family home belonging heritage resilience good times hard times displaced people rebuilding lives in a new country then and now

Manchester Jewish Museum (MJM) holds over 500 oral history testimonies. As sources of evidence, these nuanced first-hand accounts capture the lived experience of Jewish migration, settlement, and acculturation into British society. In 1978 Rebecca Casket was interviewed about her experience by Dr Ros Livshin. The original cassette tape is held in MJM’s oral history collection. This sound installation is part of a wider project sculpting a series of page and audio poems: collaged, spliced together and arising from the archive. Beginning with 'Pass', which won Imtiaz Dhaker's inaugural Chancellor's Poetry Prize, six poems play once, at 10 minute intervals. The cycle repeats on the hour from 6am - 10pm.

Kitty Martin has an MA in Writing Poetry from Newcastle University. Alongside writing, Kitty is an actor / theatre maker and communications coach.

POSTPONED

LGBTQ+ Encounters
‘LGBTQ+ Encounters’ mixes and captures 12 oral history recordings of 12 LGBTQ+ people who live the North-East. It approaches their experiences through the prism of ordinary life and uses oral history to open the usually private dialogue of personal experiences to the public. This creates an exchange which is both intimate and public; private and unguarded. In the recordings, we hear people from diverse worlds, transgressing the hierarchical power and political structures that have underpinned and defined LGBTQ+ life. The recordings are testimonies give a voice to the often invisible, minoritized identities, experiences, behaviours and living conditions of different social groups. In each the particularity of the North-East and the uniqueness of the individuals within that context evolve and twist to the next. There is no political or ideological purpose in this approach, only the desire to create a sound piece that doesn’t stand apart from everyday life but rather illuminates it by becoming part of it, a new encounter, and a fresh conversation about and within the public space.

Gareth Longstaff, Deputy Head Media Culture & Heritage, School of Arts & Cultures

Rashida Davison, Globe Gallery

Programme – June to December 2022

June 15-17

Electric Moorlands and the sound of space operations
For nearly 60 years RAF Fylingdales has tracked all human made objects launched into Low Earth Orbit to distinguish signs and give warning of a nuclear attack from space. For this reason, retired space crews have called space operations a geo-political practice. This work will make audible the electrical and sonic landscape of space operations and geopolitical practices on Fylingdales Moor.

Michael Mulvihill, Artist & Research Associate (Co-I) AHRC Turning Fylingdales Inside Out: Making practice visible and the UK’s ballistic missile early warning and space monitoring station. School of Geography, Politics and Sociology

Co-convenor Military War and Security Research Group

June 24th -30th

One Day Changes
These pieces form part of One Day Changes which is a joint exhibition by Skimstone Arts' Associate Artists and photojournalists Ako Ismail from Kurdistan Region of Iraq and Shahor Omar from Kirkuk, Iraq who now live in the North East of England with lived refugee experience. The exhibition shows how in one day something so dramatic and life-changing forces people, including children, who were leading normal lives, suddenly to become refugees fleeing their homes, and as survivors look for a safe place.

Skimstone Arts, an artist led, multi arts organisation, passionate about working with diverse Associate Artists and communities.

skimstone.org.uk/one-day-changes-exhibition

Theresa Easton, Artist & Lecturer in Fine Arts (Printmaking), Fine Art, Schools of Arts & Cultures
David Baine, Journalist & Senior Lecturer, Media & Cultural Studies, School of Arts & Cultures

July 4th-7th

Reclaim the Streets – running as feminist activity
I use running and my body as an instrument in a methodical exploration and examination of the challenges women face. I reveal how running creates an unconscious confidence, but also exposes the limitations or constraints of women’s access to the city and society raising questions of visibility, the female flaneur and patriarchal systems. The running process reveals and generates stories of people, place and societies of wunners.

The sounds of this installation follow the traces left behind by my female feet, my female breath, my female experience and creates a sound constellation of the lived experience of the wunner.

Sarah Ackland, Architect & PhD Candidate, School of Architect Planning & Landscape

July 19th – 26th

Walking Festival of Sound
Walking Festival of Sound is a transdisciplinary event exploring the role of walking through and listening to our everyday surroundings. It combines public events including walking performances, walking seminars and listening sessions, all taking place in diverse public spaces and online. Walking Festival of Sound facilitates a meeting point for the international network of practitioners and researchers interested in sound and walking. Through diverse events we explore how walking and listening practices can augment and challenge the way we perceive, navigate through, and care for our shared environments. This year’s Walking Festival of Sound is taking place in Vancouver and Seoul.

Tim Shaw, Sound artist & Lecturer in Digital Media, School of Arts & Cultures

August 29 – Sept 2nd

A walk round Contención Island
November 2020 and a second lockdown. This was an attempt to get infection rates down to allow a break at Christmas. Because of the government’s distaste for restrictions of freedoms this was introduced as being for a fixed time - 28 days. As with the first lockdown, I had the question of an artistic response. So … having spent the spring lockdown creating Contención Island I now planned to walk its edge, to walk the shoreline of the island and, in so doing, to also mark off the days of lockdown.

With a compass in the middle of the island, I measured 28 equal angles (of 12.9 degrees) and, where each cut the island rim produced 28 stretches of coastline – all of different lengths. I walked one each day, clockwise, and rebuilt the entire island; the order in which I walk the sections was determined by chance – over 28 days, re-building an island across time. Each walk was recorded in sound, poetry and line.

Martin Eccles, Sound artist & PhD Candidate, School of Arts & Cultures

October 17th-23rd

Blood, bone, crone: menopausal musings from here and there
The journey through menopause is as unique as every woman who experiences it but there remains a certain stigma about talking about this phase of our lives as if somehow we should be ashamed of our sweaty bodies and befuddled minds. The voices you hear in this this piece come from a series of workshops with women in Newcastle and Makerere (Uganda) which took place in autumn 2021, where they talked about their own menopause experiences, both as embodied and felt but also in relation to others’ responses, including their GPs, the line managers and co-workers, as well as friends and family. The primary output of the project is an 18-minute animated film and the soundtrack which comprises this piece is the audio track from the film. The film and the artworks created by the participants as they told their stories, was first exhibited in the Long Gallery, King Edward VI Building, in July 2022 and is currently on display in the foyer of the Catalyst building, Newcastle Helix, 17-23 October 2022 to celebrate World Menopause Day (18 October).

Karen Ross, Professor of Gender and Media, School of Arts and Cultures
Collaborator and animator: Sheryl Jenkins

October 24th-30th

Following the Flight of the Monarchs
An interdisciplinary acoustic ecology project led by Dr Rob Mackay, bringing together artists and scientists, connecting with ecosystems and communities along the migration routes of monarch butterflies as they travel the 3,000 mile journey between Mexico and Canada each year. Streamboxes are being installed along the monarch butterfly migration routes between Canada and Mexico. These livestream the soundscapes of these different ecosystems 24/7 via the Locus Sonus Soundmap. The streams are being used for ecosystem monitoring as well as integrating into artworks which are raising awareness of the issues the monarchs face, whose numbers have declined by nearly 90% over the past two decades due to industrial use of herbicides and pesticides, deforestation, and climate change. Artefacts produced so far include a touring installation (presented at the Eden Project, and various international conferences and festivals; a networked telematic performance; and a radio programme for BBC Radio 3 - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000qyhz). The project website is available here: https://followingtheflightofthemonarchs.com/

The sound you can hear in The Arches is from a 30 minute networked performance combining live audiostreams from monarch butterfly reserves in Mexico, USA and Canada, alongside live performances from Rob Mackay (flute, UK); David Blink (handpan and trumpet, California); and Rolando Rodriguez (poetry, Mexico).

Ritmos del Parque Urbano el Bosque
Commissioned for the Chilean Soundlapse project (https://soundlapse.net/?lang=en). The project brings together artists, biologists and computer scientists using an innovative sonic time-lapse montage technique to capture changes in the soundscapes over several years. The piece was published in November 2021 alongside other international sound artists on the German Gruenrekorder label. This work explores the rhythms inherent in field recordings taken at different times within Parque Urbano el Bosque in Valdivia, Chile as part of the Soundlapse project. During the piece the listener is taken through various rhythmic explorations between the cycles of day and night, reflecting the longer diurnal rhythms within the park.

Sea Songs
Commissioned by Invisible Dust (https://invisibledust.com/), working with Scarborough Sixth Form students over the summer of 2021 as part of the Sea Songs project (https://invisibledust.com/projects/sea-songs-soundwalks). Dr Rob Mackay ran several field recording and acoustic ecology workshops including two boats trips off the Scarborough coast to record the sounds of marine life in the area. Using hydrophones, participants were able to record the sounds of dolphins, grey seals, snapping shrimp, and even the sound of seaweed photosynthesising in rock pools. They also discovered the impact of human noise pollution underwater.

Sea Songs attempts to convey a sense of the more-than-human world in which we live and to open our ears to the strange and often unheard soundscape which is literally a few meters off the shoreline.

Rob Mackay, Senior Lecturer in Composition, School of Arts and Cultures

October 31st-November 6th

N^o. 2: no trace
“N^o. 2: no trace” is a critical engagement with solitary movement through time-space. It took place over half a mile of the River Pont in Northumberland and examined walking in the context of two walks (on the winter solstice and on the spring equinox), each one downstream and upstream, along a common route, in the river. Using Ingold’s idea of the trace, the walks allow consideration of the absence of the walker’s trace and the impact on walking of profound disruption of the walker’s senses (vision, hearing, balance).

Martin Eccles, Sound artist & PhD Candidate, School of Arts and Cultures

November 7th-10th

Baraye by Shervin Hajipour
Baraye – a song about the protests in Iran – has become an anthem for women and freedom and will play every hour on the hour over the four days. There will also be information about the song displayed on the Arches noticeboard.

An English translation of the song can be seen here

November 14th-20th

Catcher in the Rye
Coward of the County by Kenny Rogers.
Catcher in the Rye
Based on: Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger Genre: Piano piece/Sarabande.
This piece, inspired by Gymnopédies by Erik Satie, describes the confused, wishing, wandering gloom of Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. I decided to close the album with the original take of the piece recorded on an I-phone, complete with interference and background noise to create a sonic manifestation of Holden Caulfield’s brazen defiance.

Alastair King, PGR, Music, School of Arts and Cultures

November 21st - 27th

all illusions, all again
all illusions, all again documents the soundscape of Newcastle Upon Tyne in November 2021 when Storm Arwen was moving across the UK. Coming out of the later stages of the country’s re-opening the following the third national lockdown, Storm Arwen arrived at a time when the city’s streets were filled every night with bustling crowds, moving in and out of pubs and clubs, compensating for the lost nightlife of the lockdown era. This piece captures the sounds of storm, taking the vibrations against floor-to-ceiling window as a basis for its soundscape along with the throbbing of club music and the voices of those in the streets. This is a soundscape that at once transcends its immediate temporality and is truly fixed in its time. It hearkens back to Newcastle’s pre-COVID soundscape while taking record of the post-lockdown nightlife explosion.

The piece also documents the anxieties surrounding COVID and the potential in 2021 of a winter lockdown, further isolating those who were already lonely, and quashing the hopes of those desperate again to enjoy social freedom. It asks if the autonomy being enjoyed at that time was an illusion. As well as documenting Storm Arwen and the resilience of the public in the face of the storm and the pandemic, this piece is a prayer for the growth of human connection, the safety of those outdoors, and the restoration of the life.

Consider the Wounds (Kyrie Orbis Factor)
Consider the Wounds is a durational work which takes recordings of a previously composed organ work and dislocates its voices, processing and spreading them in space of the arches. The title of the piece comes from the Orbis factor text, “consider the wounds produced by the devil’s art” and repurposes them in the context of loss that has been so ubiquitous throughout, and after the pandemic. The pandemic brought to light the translocality, the worldwide impact, of loss, and this piece presents a space for reflection, a place of refuge, and a site for confronting our feelings.

For all of its shifting voices, its wandering threads and moments of difficulty, the piece is punctuated by moments of sonic clarity. Among the soundscape of dense textures and suspended time, the organ’s dislocated voices sing and lament with only one melody on their lips. The Kyrie orbis factor plainsong is woven into a tapestry entirely of itself in a plea for mercy, whether sacred or secular.

James Clay, PGR, Music, School of Arts and Cultures

November 28th-4th December

In the Sunset
This piece is part of a set of pieces I have made exploring grief, my heritage, and the stories within my Irish family. My Irish heritage is something I was drawn to investigate further following the death of my gran, utilizing recordings of her voice as the basis for several sound works.

With ‘In the Sunset’, I aimed to convey a feeling of loss and sadness that is not uniquely specific to me but can be read and translated by the audience into their own experiences. Inspired by Steve Reich’s “Different Trains”, I decided to notate clips of my Gran talking as musical motifs and orchestrated them to highlight the melodic nature of her accent, something that she would have been ridiculed for when she moved to England.

I involved field recordings of the birdsong in my Grandparents’ garden as well as recordings of my Gran’s bedroom in the weeks before she died, hoping to build a sense of nostalgia for a place that now exists in memory. The piece concludes with the final poem used in Strauss’ ‘Four Last Songs’, this is a piece of music that has inspired a lot of the musical arrangement in my work.

Beatrice Keelan, Undergraduate, Fine Art, School of Arts & Cultures

Following the Flight of the Monarchs - Dr Rob Mackay

By Rob Mackay

Following the Flight of the Monarchs: An interdisciplinary ecoacoustics project

‘Following the Flight of the Monarchs’ is an interdisciplinary project bringing together artists and scientists, connecting with ecosystems and communities along the migration routes of monarch butterflies as they travel the 3,000 mile journey between Mexico and Canada each year. The project, led by Rob Mackay (Senior Lecturer in Music at Newcastle University), connects with the international BIOM project led by Leah Barclay at the University of the Sunshine Coast (http://www.biospheresoundscapes.org/) and SoundCamp (http://soundtent.org/) to map the changing soundscapes of UNESCO Biosphere Reserves through art, science and technology.

Streamboxes are being installed in 5 locations along the monarch butterfly migration routes between Canada and Mexico. These will livestream the soundscapes of these different ecosystems 24/7 via the Locus Sonus Soundmap. The first of the boxes was successfully installed in the Cerro Pelón UNESCO monarch butterfly reserve in Mexico in 2018, and another streambox was installed at Point Pelee National Park in Canada in 2019. Further streamboxes are due for installation in Virginia, Texas, and Northern California. A collaboration is also underway with Stanford University’s Jasper Ridge Biosphere Preserve in Southern California. The streams are being used for ecosystem monitoring as well as integrating into artworks which are raising awareness of the issues the monarchs highlight, whose numbers have declined by nearly 90% over the past two decades due to industrial use of herbicides, deforestation, and climate change.

So far, there have been a number of creative outputs, including an immersive audiovisual installation which toured internationally, including the Eden Project and the New York Electroacoustic Music Festival. More recently an audiovisual telematic performance piece has been developed connecting performers in Mexico, USA, Canada and the UK in real-time with soundscapes streamed from ecosystems across the monarchs’ migration routes.

Rob created a 30 minute radio programme about the project for BBC Radio 3’s Between the Ears series, which was broadcast in January 2021. It was Pick of the Day in the Radio Times. It is still available to listen to online, combining interviews with monarch specialists in Canada, USA and Mexico, alongside binaural field recordings (including the rushing sound of millions of monarch butterfly wings), and musical performances recorded in the reserves.

Links:

Project Website: https://followingtheflightofthemonarchs.com
BBC Radio 3 programme: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000qyhz
Flight of the Monarchs installation videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dhbv63REKrM
Networking the Flight of the Monarchs Performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jpbb9dnOHPY&feature=youtu.be
Personal Website: https://robmackay.net
Interview on WGXC Radio, New York (13’24” - 31’05”): https://wavefarm.org/wf/archive/hjjaj1

Fine Art and Music collaborations in Baroque opera - Eva Masterman & Irene Brown

By Eva Masterman and Irene Brown

Fine Art and Music collaborations in Baroque opera began in 2018, when the charismatic new Head of Performance and internationally-recognised countertenor, Larry Zazzo, persuaded Senior Lecturer in Fine Art, Irene Brown to collaborate in the staging and performance of the Baroque pastoral opera, Handel's Acis and Galatea. Zazzo runs the ambitious Performing Baroque Opera module where students gain experience and develop performance skills through the fully staged production and public performance of an early opera.

Irene’s role was set designer for the one-night-only production at the Victorian Tyne Theatre and Opera House, Newcastle, in spring 2018. As a sculptor and site specific installationist, Brown most often makes work for museum’s and heritage sites, so she is familiar with working in challenging environments. This project had its own particular requirements however; the set had to describe the location of Arcadia, be impactful, contain some kind of fountain or water feature, be large enough to occupy the expanse of the stage, alter throughout the performance and had to be climbed by the villain, the giant Polyphemus. And all on a shoe string of approximately £200. It also had to fit in a van and be installed by 2 people in just a few hours.

Irene decided to create a three screen video installation as the backdrop to the Opera. Working in video supported ambitions of scale, breadth of imagery, simplicity of design and low expenditure. The only costs incurred were for 3 large, projection screens, constructed in the workshops in Fine Art. Two postgraduate art students Shaney Barton and Ryan Boyle helped to produce the video content and install the screens. The waterfall, mountain and temple videos were synced together, gradually fading from full colour to black and white as the harmony in arcadia becomes disrupted, jumping suddenly to red as Acis the hero is murdered by Polyphemus. The opera was also performed at Seaton Delaval Hall, the romantic ruin of a baroque mansion (National Trust) designed by Sir John Vanbrugh in 1718, the same year as Handel’s Acis and Galatea premiered.

The success of this inaugural collaboration was followed in 2019 by Eva Masterman, Norma Lipman Ceramic Fellow in Fine Art, this time working as set designer for the opera Dido and Aeneas. Her work deals with the intersections of staging, theatre craft and ceramic sculpture, and she therefore jumped at the chance to work on her first real stage set. Eva was awarded a HaSS Faculty Research Institute Pioneer Award to support the production of the set as part of her research practice. With student mentoring built into the project, students from the Fashion Club and Fine Art were involved in costume and set design. Taking inspiration from traditional Baroque stage design that used ‘flats’, the set comprised of a large set of arches that, through dramatic lighting changes, switched from Palace, to Cave, to Ruin as the story unfolded.

Due to numerous issues (including COVID and a broken leg), the full opera was unfortunately cancelled. However, the set and a sound piece of Dido’s Lament, sung by graduate music student Anna Dias, will be exhibited as an installation at Seaton Delaval Hall from the 23^rd June – 17^th July 2021.

These initial projects between Fine Art and Music act as successful test cases for future and perhaps wider collaborations, potentially with Opera North and the National Trust, once public performance is back on the menu.

Acis and Galatea Promotional Video https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=%21AA3B9mQH76jecBE&cid=679AA49E52CB8E24&id=679AA49E52CB8E24%2171149&parId=679AA49E52CB8E24%2168950&o=OneUp

Cetacean Conservation: An Oceanic Sound Model - David de la Haye

Curatorial Practice and the Production of Moving Image Culture - Elisabetta Fabrizi

Elisabetta Fabrizi, PhD candidate, School of Arts and Cultures

Elisabetta Fabrizi’s research at Newcastle University stems from her practice of Head of Exhibitions at the British Film Institute and of Curator at BALTIC, offering an analysis of the significance of curators’ creative work and their role in institutionally embedding the moving image at the centre of the contemporary art field.

Elisabetta’s curating and her reflections on creative practice have been recently included in a new book, ‘Artists Moving image in Britain since 1989’, published by Paul Mellon Foundation and Yale University Press to which she contributed an essay analysing her own curatorial work at the British Film Institute – describing the creative opportunities and challenges of curating a contemporary art programme for a gallery sited within a Film institution. This important and timely publication offers a critical appraisal and art historical survey of a period of great transformation for this area of creative practice; a book which aims at considering the practice of artists alongside that of curators who had an impact on the field in the period.

In the book Elisabetta reflected on how curatorial practice holds a central role in the network of forces shaping exhibition, collection and production making strategies, of which moving image is now an important part. Following her PhD research, she did this by referencing some of her commissions, including one with artists and Newcastle University Fine Art Professors Jane & Louise Wilson, who have also been acknowledged for their important contribution to the period with the inclusion of their text part of the 'Artists' section of the same publication.

Elisabetta also reflected on her work with practitioners whose work navigates between gallery and cinema auditorium, and the importance of curatorial practice in shaping the opportunities offered to them in terms of site, context and content: examples cited are John Akomfrah, Michael Snow, Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard, whom she worked with in both their capacity of visual artists and mainstream filmmakers, including by offering them access to the BFI’s extensive Film Archive to create a new commission.

Through a more personal and practice-based outlook which she has developed while at Newcastle University, the text complements The BFI Gallery Book , a book she previously published (BFI, 2011). Both Artists Moving image in Britain since 1989, and The BFI Gallery Book are available from the Robinson Library.

Elisabetta also articulated some of the ideas stemming from her PhD as part of the current Oslo Biennial; and in two reviews published by Art Monthly (in the current November issue and in the forthcoming Dec/Jan issue, https://www.artmonthly.co.uk/). She also discussed her research on art radio Resonance fm, in a panel comprising critic and broadcaster Morgan Quaintance (Art Monthly Talk show, https://www.resonancefm.com/).

E.Fabrizi2@newcastle.ac.uk

Energies: Blyth’s Industrial Pasts and Energy Futures - Dr Clifton Evers

By Clifton Evers

On behalf of the team: Maia Almeida-Amir, Clifton Evers, Mark Ireland, Greg Mutch, Anthony Zito (PI)

On July 8^th, 2021 an interdisciplinary team (cultural studies, geosciences, engineering, public policy) from Newcastle University are launching an exhibition at the socially-engaged art space Headway Arts in the Northeast coastal town of Blyth, Northumberland (9 Jly2021 – 25 July, 2021). We have been closely working with the local community, multiple community art organisations, archives, industry, and government.

Pilot funding was provided by the One Planet fund and the Institute for Creative Arts Practice at Newcastle University. Interest grew and we now have support from many organisations, including the Shadow Places Network of scholars, artists and activists will collaborate through a series of real and virtual encounters to document, co-produce and reimagine connections between places and peoples in an era of climate change.

For the exhibition we commissioned 9 outstanding regionally based artists and sourced archival footage. The exhibition invites the community of the Northeast coastal town of Blyth to share in low-carbon energy industries and the cultural transformations they may bring or already have brought. As part of the exhibit, all visitors are encouraged to share their own thoughts and reactions to Blyth’s energy futures. This is not just an opportunity to speak to each other but to listen together, to nurture shared futures and world-making.

Blyth has a long proud industrial history. It is a key location for the UK government’s decarbonisation plans. There are many promises. Then again, Blyth has borne the brunt of deindustrialisation (particularly of fossil fuel led industries) resulting in very high unemployment, poverty, and concomitant health and wellbeing challenges. While there is hope there are questions. Who benefits? What power do different stakeholders have? Who is accountable to who? Can you say no? What do locals know? What emotions are being felt? How does what happens here connect to ‘over there’? What are the more-than-human considerations? These are urgent ‘just transition’ questions. In academic discourse the ‘just transition’ concept places the rights of workers (both current and past) and communities whose livelihoods depend or depended upon fossil fuels at the center of the climate debate.

The exhibition is the first stage of a project with a creative and participatory ethos at the core, and is aimed at cultivating a wider inclusive discussion about how renewable energy industries are understood and received by local communities with a fossil fuel industrial heritage in the north-east of England. Challenges for these communities include future socio-economic and health well-being, local environmental concerns, and evolving identity given the arrival of new low carbon technologies and industries in their midst (e.g., wind turbines, sea cables, battery gigaplant, biomass power plant, geothermal, carbon capture technologies). We examine how the fossil-free future is imagined by local actors and imbricated in the (re)making of subjects, places, and conditions of life.

Crucially, the creative practice underpins the whole project. We do not view the creative practice as simply communication of research. It is research. Creative practice as research can help people to access and non-verbally express thoughts and feelings, move people to understand and feel place-based experience differently, connect people to institutions in novel ways, better account for more-than-human influence in the making of world(s), and facilitate democratic change through an engaging and empowering participative process. Arts-based research is arguably effective in generating critical and reflexive evaluation of functioning of power, making tacit knowledge available to research, and for speculating about a diversity of futures.

Anna Hickey-Moody (2013, 2016), provides multiple excellent examples of how by proceeding with an idea of creativity understood as an iterative compositional process that cuts across objects, bodies, artefacts, tools, thought, and a particular time and place that can produce an ‘affective pedagogy.’ Hickey-Moody (2016) writes, “aesthetics teach us by changing how we feel” (79) and can re-adjust what a person or institution is or is not able to understand, produce and connect to (261). Creativity as research allow us to not only recognise and appreciate change but transform social, cultural, political, material, and spatial conditions of possibility. In so doing, the potential for alternative future(s) ways of knowing ways of life can occur.

Our hope is to continue to learn from the communities and industries we are working with to further nurture this arguably generative and collectivising research approach.

Dr Clifton Evers is a senior lecturer in cultural studies at Newcastle University. Through participatory and interdisciplinary international research he performs creative practice ethnography with communities and nonhumans about environmental issues, such as polluted leisure, blue spaces, as well as just/inclusive transitions. He is also interested in the intersections of masculinities, sport, and pollution.

Cultures of Memory: Broadcast Bartender - David Farrell-Banks

In September 2019, the Cultures of Memory research group teamed up with local artists Lloyd-Wilson (Toby Lloyd and Andrew Wilson) to host a public ‘Broadcast Bartender’ event at the Ex-Libris Gallery at Newcastle University.

Our collaboration with Lloyd-Wilson sought to bring voices from outside the University into a conversation on the role of memory in our lives. It also aimed to explore alternative ways of dialoguing around topics that are unresolved and can only be advanced, we feel, through exchange and alternative forms of listening.

Under the banner of ‘Why is Memory Important?’, we hosted three sessions: a breakfast café conversation on ‘Memory Work’, a lunchtime session on ‘The Art and Science of Memory’, and an evening session on ‘Decolonising Memory’. Across the course of the day, we heard from artists, neuropsychologists, museum and gallery curators, Newcastle University Students Union, and academic colleagues from: Media, Culture, Heritage; Architecture; Oral History, and more. These conversations are all available as podcasts.

Unlike more traditional forms of academic communication, for these sessions, guests were invited to sit around a purpose-built bar and engage in a conversation between each other and the bartender (the chairperson for the session, as it were). While there was an audience for the events, the guests at the bar largely faced away from the audience and were instead focused on conversation with each other. The space became an informal setting for conversation to flow. Lloyd-Wilson’s setup, and their role as hosts for these sessions, created an environment that felt completely distinct from our usual public, academic events.

With each session drawing an audience of 20-30, in addition to the invited bar guests and bartender, the collaboration resulted in a lively and engaging day. For those of us who work in memory studies research in our day to day work, the event was refreshing, providing us with an opportunity to hear from new perspectives, to re-engage our own intellectual passions.

The collaborative work was also a positive experience for Lloyd-Wilson. They commented:

“Collaborating with the Cultures of Memory was an opportunity for us (Lloyd & Wilson) to test the format of Broadcast Bartender in new and challenging ways: holding three events over the course of one day, with 'dry' sessions (morning and lunchtime) and an evening session serving alcohol. Working alongside CoM introduced us to new areas of thinking and research, as well as a diverse range of event participants and the possibility to reach new and responsive audiences. This has been true in terms of those who attended the live events, and those who will continue to listen to the discussions online. We (Lloyd & Wilson) have often worked with academics to produce Broadcast Bartender events, but never within the context of a university and over such a broad range of disciplines. Having a diverse range of participants from the university and cultural institutions helped us to develop the project and think about how it could be used in other contexts in the future.”

The recordings of these sessions are available online. Although this Broadcast Bartender event took place before the pandemic, our experiences this year have often challenged us to re-think how our memory practices shape our everyday and the environment we inhabit. Returning to these conversations brings new perspectives to the discussions. We would of course encourage you to take the time to listen to these conversations, and to hopefully feel as energised by them as we were.

The series of recordings is available to listen to here.

For more information please contact alison.atkinson-phillips@newcastle.ac.uk

Jo Coates residency with Berwick Visual Arts - Jo Coates

It began as a six month residency with Berwick Visual Arts (BVA), Newcastle University Institute for Creative Arts Practice, and Centre for Rural Economy (CRE). Now there’s ice on my windscreen, its bobble hat weather and Christmas is coming.

You may have questions…

Who am i?
What is this project? (http://www.berwickvisualarts.co.uk/artists/23/joanne-coates-january-october-2020 )
What's an artist residency? (See below)
What's my star sign? (Taurus sun libra rising, just in case you’re wondering.)
Why are you still in Northumberland? (Again see below)

Well, it’s that old COVID chestnut. Lockdown put a hold on the residency. (A side note. The arts and many artists have suffered. I can not wait to spend time in galleries, just looking at work and feeling emotion.Thank you for all the work everyone has done to make their programmes accessible.) I’m very lucky James Lowther, at BVA, made sure the residency could continue. I undertook safety training and we were off again. I can’t deny it. The residency has been hard work, I work with communities on long term socially engaged projects using photography. It’s all about working with people, which means lots of organising and consideration. Arts residencies are seen as different things to different people. For me, a low income working class lass, isolated by location finding the arts world hard to navigate, it meant I had the chance to focus on a project whilst not spinning multiple plates. Logistically to make work, I usually need to take on assignments, commercial work, running a small arts org, visiting lecture work, workshops, guest speaker work and milking some cows to top up my income. Having no money in the arts, you feel like a lemon being slowly squeezed. That’s fine until there’s nothing left. It’s A LOT to manage. The problem with that is there’s no space to work. No time to think. No time to make art. As a rural based artist with a partner who is a farmer, the issues really resonated with my practice.

These past months; I’ve worked with academic Sally Shorthall, I’ve spoken to academics in the USA, farmers overseas on land access, listened to audio from the past around the bondagers, put on a work in progress show, spoken at a academic conference about the work, listened to 36 female farmer focused podcasts, walked the cheviot hills, read 29 related research books, talked at the local PechaKucha, printed work, looked at mapping land, creating a quiz with female farmers, played with wool, looked at boundaries, shared work with Collective Form, attended 2 crits, visited the archives, spoken with 44 female farmers based with Northumberland and the borders, recorded audio, made photos together, explored forgotten farming scapes, looked at political and societal issues within agriculture.

So what does this mean to me? As an artist with a mental health disability I’ve learnt slowly about my boundaries and limitations. That artists should be paid for the work they do, they are the lifeblood of the creative industries. A residency for me enables me to make work, it gives me the space to make art. To work hard, to consider ethics, to think carefully, to plan participation. To try out ideas in a work in progress show in Berwick where the public, local artists, and farmers themselves came and fed back on the work. One of the core elements to diversifying arts is paying them. It’s a healthy relationship, it is saying ‘I respect your work and value your worth.’ A residency is a way of nurturing artists, making sure they watered and fed, so they can continue to grow.

I’m here until the end of December 2020 and have activities planned everyday, (apart from my walking day, everyone needs time off, IT’S HEALTHY!) That’s Merry Christmas from me. If you want to see the work catch it at The Gymnasium Gallery in Berwick 2022.

Using creative practice to turn ballistic missile early warning inside out - Michael Mulvihill

Birds of a Feather - Irene Brown

This project brings together artist, scientist, naturalist and film maker in the collaborative production of a highly experimental artwork as the focus for exploring the potential of contemporary art to bring avian conservation and ecology concerns to the forefront of cultural conversations. Creating a complex video work, a ‘living taxidermy’ case of common British birds using innovative and experimental wildlife filming techniques never attempted before. The research, development and production of the project is intended to create a hub, attracting an expanding group of interested participants. The exhibition of the artwork will act as the catalyst for a series of talks, seminars and workshops on avian wildlife conservation.

It is instigated by Irene Brown, Head of Fine Art, who’s research is engaged with wonder; investigating the threshold between aesthetic and scientific realms. The collaborative team includes Mark Whittingham, Professor of Applied Ecology, School of Natural and Environmental Sciences, SAgE. Mark has been Senior editor for Journal of Applied Ecology for 6 years, and is a Fellow of Royal Society of Biology. Also, Tom Cadwallender, Professional naturalist and guest lecturer at the School of Natural and Environmental Sciences. Tom has a long career in wildlife conservation and landscape management and has been engaged with gathering data on bird populations and behaviour for the past five decades. And also Cain Scrimgeour, freelance wildlife filmmaker, Media Director and Expedition Leader at Wild Intrigue. Cain is a Lecturer in Wildlife Media at the University of Cumbria and has produced films and worked for the RSPB, the Natural History Society of Northumbria, ORCA Northumberland National Park, English Heritage, Taskscape, Northumberland Wildlife Trust, and ITV

We know through scientific data collected by volunteers, that many common bird species are suffering declines in their populations. Many of these reductions are as a result of the impacts of human activities that have been well rehearsed through modern information media, much of which goes largely unheard. However we are now reaching crisis point for some species and we need new innovative ways of stimulating conversations about wildlife conservation, particularly birds, with members of the general public and decision makers. Interpretation of wildlife conservation themes need to be accessible, thought provoking and enjoyable to all age groups, as enjoyment is a key component to our understanding and appreciation of the natural environment. Art can influence society by changing opinions, instilling values and translating experiences. This project brings together a specific group of experts in an act of beauty and activism, the creation of an artwork that connects people with nature, engages new audiences and provokes dialogues on wildlife conservation themes.

The research, development and production of the project is intended to create a hub, attracting an expanding group of interested participants. The exhibition of the artwork acting as the catalyst for a series of talks, seminars and workshops on wildlife conservation.

If you are interested in being involved or contributing to the research project please email Irene. Website: irenebrown.co.uk

Tea Towel Project - for Sue - Liv Collins

By Liv Collins, 4th Year Fine Art, School of Arts and Cultures

In December 2020, I decided to establish a community art project, Tea towel Project – For Sue, based in the small rural village of Oulston, North Yorkshire (where I grew up). The aim of this project was to commemorate and celebrate the life of Sue Allum, a beloved member of our community, who sadly passed away at the end of 2020. Due to strict covid-19 restrictions, only her close family were able to attend her funeral. Thus, I felt compelled to start a project which would allow my community to say goodbye to Sue, and to come together at a time when we were being told to stay two metres apart.

So, I gave pieces of paper to over 50 women and girls in my village and invited them to do whatever they pleased with it. I wanted to make this a feminist project in order to reflect Sue’s brilliant feminist values. I was bowled over by the response, from origami to poetry, my community had created a plethora of unique artworks which celebrated Sue. Due to the funding I kindly received from the Institute for Creative Arts Practice, I was able to design and print a collection of tea towels which exhibit all of the artworks together. These tea towels will be distributed to every household who participated in this project. These collaborative tea towels will sit in our kitchens, as a vibrant reminder to the importance of friendship, community, and the brilliant legacy which Sue has left behind.

For more information on the project, please contact: O.collins3@newcastle.ac.uk

COP26 UN Climate Change

Our cultural practitioners are contributing to the climate change debate through creative writing, film, fine art, exhibitions and more.

Engaging communities with challenges facing our world

Climate change is complicated and can often feel as if it is happening far away. But it is part of our everyday lives and its impacts are all around us.

Our cultural practitioners are working with communities here in our region and around the world to explore climate change.

They’re using art, film, photography, creative writing and more to engage people young and old with the challenges facing our planet.

Find out more