Everything changes, everything stays the same

A year-long Fellfoot Forward arts project for 2023

This community arts project, funded by Arts Council England and Westmorland and Furness Council, involves a programme of workshops and events with regionally, nationally, and internationally acclaimed musicians and sound artists, working with rurally isolated communities across the Fellfoot Forward landscape, to document the natural and social worlds through music and sound throughout the year.

Fellfoot Radio

Fellfoot Radio is a 24/7 broadcast featuring sounds and voices from the Fellfoot Forward scheme area in Cumbria, including three audio streams broadcasting live in the landscape. Find out more and listen here.

Fellfoot Sounds

A day, night and dawn amongst the trees and stones took place at Into The Woods, Glassonby, Cumbria in August 2023. This relaxed daytime and one night campout was a small environmentally friendly event where participants could listen, make, enjoy live performance, music and workshops with artists who create work in and about the environment. Read about the event and artists here and read the blog here.

Field recording and environmental listening workshop

Internationally renowned sound artists, Chris Watson and Tim Shaw, led a group of artists and practitioners on a practical field recording workshop in the Fellfoot Forward area. Participants who live or work in the scheme area gained hands-on experience of the craft of field recording, location sound, and new ways of listening to our shared sound-scapes. Read more here.

Workshops with schools

Artists Jayne Dent and Jeremy Bradfield have designed and delivered sound and music workshops with 4Eden, supporting all participants to create and collect sounds for sharing through radio broadcast and beyond. Read more here.

Pupils at Langwathy Primary School worked with artists Jayne Dent and Tim Shaw to create and collect sounds for sharing through sound and music workshops. The resulting sounds will be shared through radio broadcast and beyond.

Artists Jeremy Bradfield and Jorge Boehringer designed and delivered sound and music workshops at Culgaith Primary School, with the collected sounds shared through radio broadcast and beyond. Read more here.

Artist biographies

Jayne Dent is an interdisciplinary artist, musician, composer and producer based in Newcastle upon Tyne. Her work often combines and collages a diverse range of media, including sound (predominantly voice, electronics, sampling, and field recording), moving image, textiles, coding, photography and print, incorporating storytelling and exploring forums in which people tell their stories and modern myths. She also has an interest in site/landscape, technology and nature.

Jayne works in collaboration with artists, producing sound design and music for theatre, animation, film, podcasts and sound walks. Her main body of work takes the form of experimental song-writing with voice and electronics as ‘Me Lost Me‘. She leads community sound, music, art and creative practice workshops with groups around the north east, has performed live for BBC Radio 3’s After Dark Festival and as part of the 2022 BBC Proms, received the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Composers, and was 2020-2021 Artist in Residence at Sage Gateshead.

Jeremy Bradfield is a composer, sound designer, and performer based in the north east, specialising in multi-instrumental live music for theatre and passionate about enhancing storytelling through use of musical humour, pathos and tension. He collaborates with other artists and workshop participants in lyric writing, improvisation and exploring group music making as a means to self expression, using music technology to create hybrid instruments.

Jeremy has written and performed original music and sound design for theatrical shows at Northern Stage and Kitchen Zoo, and is currently running song-writing workshops in primary schools with New Writing North.

Jorge Boehringer is a sound artist, noise fanatic, amp worshipper, music composer, and environmental artist. An electro-acoustic musician, composer, sound designer, and installation artist from the United States now based in the north of England. He composes and performs music as a solo artist and as part of ensembles, including using viola, guitar, objects, percussion, voice, and electronics.

Jorge is also a writer, researcher, educator, curator, and community organiser. He is committed to encouraging inclusiveness, diversity, and experimentalism in DIY artistic and community spaces, and views this work as a strong source for innovative practice within the arts as well as a site at which grassroots social development can be enacted.

Tim Shaw is an artist working with sound, light and communication media. Presenting work through performances, installations and sound walks, Tim is interested in how listening environments can be constructed or explored using a diverse range of techniques and technologies. Tim is a Lecturer in Digital Media at Newcastle University and the co-curator of the Walking Festival of Sound.

As part of the arts project, Tim will be building and installing three open microphones in the landscape for live streaming and delivering the field recording workshop with Chris Watson workshop, as well as working with Langwathby  Primary School.

Image credits: Photo of Jayne Read (c)Amelia Read and photo of Tim Shaw (c)Jonathan Turner