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.