Flock

With artist Kathy Hinde and a small group of early morning listeners we had an amazing experience of hundreds of thousands of starlings leaving their Somerset roost at dawn. Moving, spectacular, stunning ... what more can I say.

Twitchr Starling Walk

I'll be helping out with this walk to listen to the starling murmurations out on the Avalon Marshes in Somerset on 19 November.

Minute of Listening

In autumn I'll be working again with Sound and Music to help roll out a trial of their new Minute of Listening project in Cornwall. A fascinating idea, and the sort of thing I would have loved at school!

A thousand voices

Thanks to everyone who came on our night time wander to listen to the thousands of birds roosting at high tide at Dawlish Warren. Sitting quietly in the dark at the roost sharing the sound of oystercatchers, brent geese, curlew, wigeon and dunlin all jostling for space was really wonderful, perhaps amplified by the remarkably high spring tide and the perfect cool stillness of the air.

I'll be thinking about one more sound walk as part of Aune Head Arts Flittermice and Hoots series in the next few weeks ... and will try and put the field recordings into a podcast to try and hint at the sound experinces we've had.

Dusk at Dawlish Warren, 28 October 16:30 to 19:00

As part of Aune Head Arts Flittermice and Hoots series I'm leading an evening sound walk to identify and listen to the migrant wildfowl for which Dawlish Warren is so well known. If you’re interested in making sound recordings, bring along a mini-disc, digital or other recording device as there will be many opportunities for capturing the evening’s soundscape.

The City Rings

This sound project, linking selected schools in Belgium, Spain, Denmark and UK is coming to an end. The results from Cornwall are documented here.

The poetry of the earth is never dead

Due to poor weather we resheduled our walk in search of crickets and grasshoppers and other small sounds to the week following the advertised date. Fortunately it was second time lucky as six of us enjoyed a warm still evening's wander around Orley Common.

We were rewarded with the quiet sounds of dark bush crickets and the considerably louder reeling of the UK's largest insect, the great green bush cricket. Alongside these we also recorded the echo-location of bats transposed through a bat detector and numerous calls of birds, including some very active jays and the pre roost calls of blackbirds.

Finally, in darkness, we picked our way back to the car park, our path faintly illuminated by the natural limestone paving.

The following week we gathered again, this time at Aune Head Arts studios at Dartington. There, using laptops and the studio's very wizzy Macs we started to edit our collected audio in what will be a series of short podcasts for Aune Head's website. More on this in October.

The City Rings

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 the earth is never dead- 6/7 September 2011

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

Efford Walks

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)

Efford Take-a-Party

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.

Dusk to Dawn Chorus

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.

Dusk to Dawn Chorus

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

Other Voices, 7-8 May

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

Plymouth Tracks II

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.

High View School Project

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.

High View School Project

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.

High View School Project

I start today on a short project to document the sounds and voices of High View School in Efford, Plymouth. This builds on work last year with Efford Take a Part. The sounds will be uploaded to Radio Aporee.