Lithophones in the landscape

A Place in Time

The majority of the five thousand plus Fellfoot Forward inhabitants live in the villages scattered around the scheme area. Each of these villages has a unique social story spanning centuries and millennia, some as far back as eight thousand years. Through our consultation, we have learnt there is the potential for enhanced engagement between Fellfoot Forward communities. We are interested in arts activity that connects residents across boundary lines, and beyond the duration of the commission. Equally, we would like to connect residents with lives lived in their villages and lives to come – what are the stories, hopes and fears about change and constancy in village life.

Lithophones in the Landscape

This participatory programme by BlueJam Arts and Stephen Burke will support young people in the Fellfoot Forward area to explore and perform the musical geologies of the places they live through workshops and live performances. Rocks and stones will be used as musical instruments, and through this process young people will be inspired to grow their understanding of the deep time of their landscape.
What does my village sound like?
What do different villages sound like when performed together?
Can I perform the ground beneath my feet and the stones in the walls of my home?

“We are really excited to be here again working as part of the Fellfoot Forward programme. We have been engaging local people, including children from Castle Carrock & Armathwaite schools, and exploring how the underlying geology is shaping the natural and built environments of the places they live and visit and creating musical and visual responses.

They have designed and created instruments using rock and wood and played with stone, water, wood, and wind to make a soundtrack from how these elements play on each other. They have also created poems and songs, shared reminiscences and emotional responses, contrasting the long time expanses of geological change and our perceptions of a busy and quickly altering present.

There will be a final soundtrack, made up of short pieces created by the schoolchildren using stone instruments they have helped to design and make, alongside sounds created by group sessions in special places especially where stone meets water. Verbal reflections will sit as a layer on top, just as our history and future is layered on top of the slow stone beneath.”

Founded in 2002, BlueJam Arts is an innovative community music and arts organisation, which runs a full programme of inclusive creative workshops, training, and professional and community performance activities and events. Directed by Jilly Jarman, they initiate and collaborate on music, film, performance, and digital art-centred work, delivered through sessions in the community, in schools, and at their Art Space in Penrith. Their specialism is improvisation, which they pursue through jazz workshops and performances, and also use as a discipline to inform the way they deliver programmes and structure groups. They have worked with schools in the Fellfoot area for over 20 years.

Stephen Burke, born in North Yorkshire, is a percussionist who worked for nearly twenty years as a freelance musician in London. This work included performing with the leading orchestras in the UK, as well composition and improvisation, electronic music, experimental and contemporary music as well as historical research and performance. Stephen has always been passionate about education and community music, particularly working with young people and using improvisation and composition to make the music more relevant to the situation.

He has performed as timpanist & percussionist with the Philharmonia, BBC Symphony Orchestra and English Chamber Orchestra and also with the CBSO, Hallé, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and RTÉ in Dublin. In recent years he has worked with many composers including Steve Reich, John Adams, George Benjamin, Charles Camilleri, Peter Maxwell Davis, I Wayan Dibia and James McMillan.

Since moving to Cumbria, Stephen has been researching the tradition of lithophones, both in Cumbria and internationally, and has been experimenting with various types of rock as well as tuning systems in order to create his own instruments.