Listening as a device

The artist Tim Shaw and producer John Coburn have produced an arts programme that inspires local engagement with place through the use of listening and sound technologies. John and Tim frequently work with sound as a device to build empathy and connectedness.

John and Tim are working with seventeen Year 5 pupils at Langwathby CofE School on a six week sound art programme. The young people will be supported to explore the sounds of their natural and social environments – the sounds we can hear today, endangered sounds we might not hear in the future, and sounds that are already extinct in the villages where they live. Over the six weeks, the young people will learn how to investigate their sound worlds, digitally record and remix sounds, build their own microphones, perform extinct bronze age sounds at Long Meg stone circle, design and lead their own sound walks, and
through this process create the first ever sound archive of the East Fellside area for future generations to listen to.

Through the project Tim and John aim to:

• increase the skills of participants to work creatively with sound technologies.
• increase empathy and understanding of participants (with where they live and the people who live there), creating a stronger sense of community and the heritage of the area.
• establish listening practices of participants that can continue post-project. Ideally the school will be supported to continue sound projects and sound collecting, establishing a bank of child-led sounds that reveals their world around them and how it can change over time.
• increase wellbeing of participants. Engaging with natural sounds ‘confers a sense of place, connects people to nature, and increasing evidence suggests they are important for human health and well-being’ (A synthesis of health benefits of natural sounds and their distribution in national parks, 2021).
• create deeper engagements with the natural landscape and with themes of local and global environmental sustainability

Following consultation with head teacher, Sally Hay, the following workshops and activity plan has been created:

• Scene setting
• Sound walk
• Sound mapping
• Sound collecting
• Microphone building
• Sounds of Langwathby we didn’t know existed
• Disappeared and extinct sounds
• Bronze Age concert
• Remixing sounds of Langwathby / East Fellside
• Creative project
• Celebration of project

John Coburn and Tim Shaw have collaborated for over eight years on artistic programmes that inspire and empower underserved communities to more deeply engage with place, urban and rural, and people, both historical and present day. They work with sound and the act of listening as a device to build empathy and connectedness, support people to learn new skills (from using new technologies to making transmitters and radios, to learning how to record and share digital sounds, to interpreting sounds in everyday life that so often go unnoticed) and to see familiar environments afresh. Their practice always aims to support diverse communities to maintain their engagement in listening practices post-project.

Tim Shaw was a former pupil of Langwathby Primary and now tours everywhere, from the Amazon to the Alps, recording and listening to sound: www.tim-shaw.net @tim4shaw

John Coburn lives in Chopwell and produces arts and heritage programmes across the UK: www.wild-museum.com @j0hncoburn