Feelins That are Felt....

Emerging once more after being off in Rossendale teaching an intensive course at Horse and Bamboo Theatre. The Saturday 10th of July installation was a great success at Clitheroe Castle. I estimated about 450 people came through and heard the sounds of my piece echoing over to Pendle hill...

As I was aware of the siting we had chosen well in advance I chose to use archive recordings of play songs for much of the raw material. This was, in my opinion, very successful artistically, fusing sound and space.

It was wonderful to see children jumping to the play songs. One member of the public suggested that next time skipping ropes and a ball be put out with the piece. Not a bad idea… Children stopped transfixed following the stereo panning in the space. In the section about food the repetition of Rose Nutall’s talk about humbugs got several laughs. This is the first time a sound installation of mine has got people laughing out loud.

I have been assessing the whole project, well over 600 people were directly contacted during the course of the month, there were also over 600 listens to material from the North West Sound Archives, including over 150 online.

I hope I have shown that there can be a variety of ways of utilising this extraordinary resource, it is an historical document, but it is also a source of inspiration, humour, stories, mystery, joy and reflection.