A Sonic Palimpsest: Revisiting Chatham Historic Dockyards
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Kent
Department Name: Centre for Music and Audio Technology
Abstract
The project seeks to investigate the role of sound in influencing our experience of spaces and places, focusing on heritage sites and using the Chatham Historic Dockyard as a case study. This project will explore how sound can be utilised within heritage contexts to immerse and engage members of the public, providing alternative interpretations of space and place through aural means and revealing new forms of engagement with significant sites.
This investigation will be approached through the development of site-sensitive works, with empirical data collection of audience experience providing critical feedback on theory and practice.
A series of outputs will be delivered including a digitised electronic audio archive (from archival recordings of approx. 80 hours held by the Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust), music compositions and sound installations within the Dockyard Museum, a public project website (providing documentation and evaluation of the project in progress), interactive projects for secondary school students, publications in academic journals and papers to be presented at conferences.
The case study of Chatham Dockyard offers a unique opportunity to explore these notions, providing diverse and compelling physical spaces and a rich heritage which has evolved over the last 400 years to reflect at all times the latest technological and industrial innovations of the eras - from sail to steam to nuclear technologies. While the visual fabric of the buildings remains, the sounds of human activities have long since been silenced. This project provides an opportunity to reawaken these lost sounds and to rediscover a rich industrial heritage through fresh ears.
Through the case study of Chatham Dockyard an innovative method of recreating past ages of heritage sites will be developed, which will be applicable in other situations with appropriate adjustments, and thereby of national if not international significance.
This investigation will be approached through the development of site-sensitive works, with empirical data collection of audience experience providing critical feedback on theory and practice.
A series of outputs will be delivered including a digitised electronic audio archive (from archival recordings of approx. 80 hours held by the Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust), music compositions and sound installations within the Dockyard Museum, a public project website (providing documentation and evaluation of the project in progress), interactive projects for secondary school students, publications in academic journals and papers to be presented at conferences.
The case study of Chatham Dockyard offers a unique opportunity to explore these notions, providing diverse and compelling physical spaces and a rich heritage which has evolved over the last 400 years to reflect at all times the latest technological and industrial innovations of the eras - from sail to steam to nuclear technologies. While the visual fabric of the buildings remains, the sounds of human activities have long since been silenced. This project provides an opportunity to reawaken these lost sounds and to rediscover a rich industrial heritage through fresh ears.
Through the case study of Chatham Dockyard an innovative method of recreating past ages of heritage sites will be developed, which will be applicable in other situations with appropriate adjustments, and thereby of national if not international significance.
Planned Impact
The project will have impact on the public sector and the third sector, and will include members of the general public consisting of those with broad historical, cultural, heritage, musical and generally sound-based interests.
The public sector will be involved through the development of collaborations with local secondary schools for small projects, engaging students with the heritage soundscapes and generating discussions on the changes in the environment and social life through the ages.
Impact on the third sector will be achieved through our collaboration with the Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust, which is a registered charity. The Trust has agreed to lend us their old archived recordings for restoration, and to grant us access to develop exhibitions within the Dockyard buildings and the historic ships, which will impact positively on visitor numbers.
We will seek to engage members of the public with the aural signature of historical contexts and connect them with the conditions from the past. The project has the potential to improve well-being, enhance cultural enrichment and quality of life for the general public by increasing knowledge and understanding of important aspects of history and culture. Through the exhibitions in the Historic Dockyard Museum, visitors will be able to engage with the sound material, and they will be encouraged to record information about their experience; this opens a two-way engagement, as there will be interaction and dialogue with the public to inform our research. The public engagement will demonstrate the relevance of research and the value of heritage and culture. The collected data will be analysed and the results will be published in academic journals but also (in layman's terms) in non-academic media, which will stimulate the public interest, aiming to increase visitor numbers to the historic site.
The project team will develop existing skills in restoring tape recordings, composing with soundscape material, analysing information and conference organisation. Team members will also develop management skills, knowledge on exhibition organisation and writing for a non-academic audience. The team will also acquire and develop knowledge in constructing realistic facsimile soundscapes based on historical information. The Research Assistant will have the opportunity to work on the restoration and development of original material, and develop competence in soundscape design and public engagement.
The public sector will be involved through the development of collaborations with local secondary schools for small projects, engaging students with the heritage soundscapes and generating discussions on the changes in the environment and social life through the ages.
Impact on the third sector will be achieved through our collaboration with the Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust, which is a registered charity. The Trust has agreed to lend us their old archived recordings for restoration, and to grant us access to develop exhibitions within the Dockyard buildings and the historic ships, which will impact positively on visitor numbers.
We will seek to engage members of the public with the aural signature of historical contexts and connect them with the conditions from the past. The project has the potential to improve well-being, enhance cultural enrichment and quality of life for the general public by increasing knowledge and understanding of important aspects of history and culture. Through the exhibitions in the Historic Dockyard Museum, visitors will be able to engage with the sound material, and they will be encouraged to record information about their experience; this opens a two-way engagement, as there will be interaction and dialogue with the public to inform our research. The public engagement will demonstrate the relevance of research and the value of heritage and culture. The collected data will be analysed and the results will be published in academic journals but also (in layman's terms) in non-academic media, which will stimulate the public interest, aiming to increase visitor numbers to the historic site.
The project team will develop existing skills in restoring tape recordings, composing with soundscape material, analysing information and conference organisation. Team members will also develop management skills, knowledge on exhibition organisation and writing for a non-academic audience. The team will also acquire and develop knowledge in constructing realistic facsimile soundscapes based on historical information. The Research Assistant will have the opportunity to work on the restoration and development of original material, and develop competence in soundscape design and public engagement.
Publications
Pasoulas A
(2023)
Sonic Heritage - Listening to the Past
Pasoulas A
(2022)
Soundscapes of the Past: Historical Imaginings
| Title | Heritage Soundmap (online version) |
| Description | The Heritage Soundmap presents events that took place at Chatham Dockyard during the period of five centuries, between its foundation as a working yard in 1547 and its closure in 1984. During that time, more than 500 warships were launched in the dockyard and thousands more were repaired. Our research team collected scores of stories of this period through diaries, oral history archives, written accounts, maps and photographs. This soundmap represents a small sample of those stories, eavesdropping on past ages through a virtual time machine. These are mapped in two ways: in time, starting from the 1600s; and in themes, which are divided in 'Community', Growth and Experience', 'Technology', 'Craftmanship' and 'International Relationships'. The (re)created stories were performed by members of Rainham Theatrical Society on an original script written specifically for the Heritage Soundmap. Those performances became part of 37 soundscape compositions created by our research team to form the final stories of the soundmap. |
| Type Of Art | Artefact (including digital) |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | As this has just been published, the impact is not known yet. This section will be updated in the next report. |
| URL | https://www.sonic-palimpsest.org.uk/ |
| Title | History Revisited: Exploring the sounds and stories of Chatham Historic Dockyard |
| Description | "History Revisited: Exploring the sounds and stories of Chatham Historic Dockyard" is an audio-visual installation that presents tales of Chatham Dockyard, recounted by voices of the past and reflected on by voices of the present. It invites the listener to walk through 18 sound compositions created by students from Canterbury Academy Secondary School and our research team. Students were inspired to compose with field recordings of the Chatham Dockyard site, developing their pieces in workshops conducted by our research team in November 2021. The sonic works include sounds from the dockyard and interviews with former workers of the yard. "History Revisited" was presented through the Music & Audio Arts Sound Theatre (MAAST), using 26 loudspeakers and three projectors at the Mezzanine of Slip 3, Chatham Historic Dockyard. This custom surround sound system placed the listener inside the soundscapes, creating an enveloping and immersive sound experience in an area which is a little more than 1.6 square kilometres. The space is very impressive visually, and with its wooden structure, it evokes past ages beyond our lifetime. We chose that space for the installation because of its strong historical allusions. We let visitors discover that historic space by navigating it through sound, and also to emphasise sonic experiences by exposing visitors to such a powerful space. Three screens displayed images of the dockyard archives, emphasising further the connection between the soundscapes and histories. |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | Many people came in groups, including schools, which often visit the dockyard. In the five days that the installation stayed, we give a conservative estimate of 200 visitors. Visitors left very positive written comments for our work, and our team talked to many of them, who were very enthusiastic about the installation; they found it very engaging, and they regarded it as an integral part of that historic space. Our work was received enthusiastically both by the general public and the dockyard museum, who are adapting their approach to exhibiting history, by developing a new direction in representing the past with new methods of display to include sound, in order to enhance the visitor experience, and help visitors to understand the different layers of local history. As an example, the Dockyard Museum opened the new Ropery Gallery in spring 2022, and they gave us a commission to create a soundscape using sounds we recorded at the ropery. |
| Title | New Ropery Gallery installation at Dockyard |
| Description | We created a soundscape composition, using field recordings made and processed by us in Chatham Dockyard Ropery. Our composition is part of a permanent installation at the New Ropery Gallery. We collaborated with the creative studio Lima, who were responsible for the visual part of the installation. The Chatham Ropery attracts visitors throughout the year, who enjoy the new installation, and learn through sound and image historical aspects of the local manufacturing industry, its machinery and ropemakers who worked in that space. |
| Type Of Art | Composition/Score |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | The permanent installation engages members of the public with the aural signature of historical contexts and connects them with the conditions from the past. Our composition, in combination with the visual aspect of the installation, enhances cultural enrichment by increasing knowledge and understanding of important aspects of history and culture. |
| URL | https://thedockyard.co.uk/news/forward-thinking-creative-team-appointed-to-redesign-famous-ropery-ga... |
| Title | Whispers of the Past |
| Description | The geolocated soundwalk 'Whispers of the Past' explores and presents stories from archives from men and women who worked at the Chatham Dockyard before it became a museum. We hear personal accounts, moving stories, descriptions, memories and anecdotes that become vivid and alive again through the voices of those who experienced them. The soundwalk is presented at the Chatham Historic Dockyard, a maritime heritage site, through the free downloadable Echoes app. As visitors move across the site they trigger sounds and memories on their mobile devices creating new resonances with this iconic location. This collection of 10 short composed sonic stories was commissioned by SparkedEcho as part of the Electric Medway Festival taking place between 21-30 August 2021. |
| Type Of Art | Composition/Score |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Impact | This work was a commissioned by Sparked Echo as part of the Electric Medway Festival between 21-30 August 2021, and has since been adopted as a permanent exhibition item by the Chatham Dockyard Museum. The success of this output in the ears of the museum curators, has led to a series of subsequent invitations to make commissions and collaborations across the museum site. Thus, the original project has helped to inform and change the opinions of the curatorial staff to consider the power of sound as a valuable element in their exhibition strategy. |
| URL | https://explore.echoes.xyz/collections/9pGPjblUjXaiACPB |
| Description | Our research demonstrates how the rich potential of sound-based knowledge informs our understanding of histories, reignites memories and experiences, and enable us better understand social and cultural roles of places and communities, both past and present. We developed a method for depicting scenes of bygone ages of heritage sites through sound and space, by recreating historical scenes based on personal accounts. We investigated how the vantage point of the individual and personal experience could unravel and explore alternative histories. The majority of the historical records documents everyday life from privileged hierarchical positions, while other members of society are left silenced. Our work reverses this course by presenting a radical shift in the way knowledge is transmitted and controlled. We collected stories between 16th and 20th centuries through diaries, archives, oral history and scholarly publications, and created scripts to revive scenes performed by actors. The historical settings were designed with bespoke sonic material to create immersive environments which can be experienced in our Heritage Soundmap. Our geolocated soundwalk 'Whispers of the Past' utilised the oral history archives of Chatham Dockyard. Participants use their mobile phones to navigate in the dockyard, triggering sound stories as they arrive to specified points on the map. This work explores memories from people who worked at the dockyard before its closure in 1984. We restored and digitised the tape archives to preserve them for posterity and enriched them with new interviews we conducted with former dockyard workers. These interviews helped us access the fundamental importance of sound in industrial activity and the action of the individuals. Being able to talk directly to people who worked in the dockyard gave us a unique insight into the relationships amongst workers, occupational hierarchies and positions. We aimed to interview women, whose voices were largely missing from the existing dockyard archives. Our multi-speaker audio-visual installation 'History Revisited' was exhibited in Slip 3 at Chatham dockyard, presenting 18 sound compositions. The building's wooden structure evokes past ages with strong historical allusions. Our aim was to allow visitors discover the historic space by navigating it through sound, and to emphasise the sonic content of the installation by exposing them to the historic landmark. Half of the compositions were created by schoolchildren of Canterbury Academy using our field recordings. We delivered workshops at the Academy, initiating and nurturing discussions on how the local sound environment and social life have changed since the 16th century. We thus created a connection between the young generation and a heritage site, encouraging children to value local history through their own creations. Our installation drew attention to the crucial role that sound plays in understanding and communicating history. It provides a sonic re-enactment of the space and draws listeners in to engage with the histories and architectures explored. Our outputs and findings have been disseminated so far through two published papers, six conference presentations and through the conference Sonic Cartography we organised at the Chatham Dockyard. |
| Exploitation Route | Our research project focused on the role of sound in human experiences, as well as on heritage, aural histories and interpretation of memories, and their relationship with location and temporal identity through sound. These threads can be taken forward by academics within the media arts, sound and music, and more specifically within the fields of soundscape studies, archiving, composition, radio art and sound installation. Our novel approach to historical documentation can be taken forward in sociology and historical representation. The material our project provided (digitised archive, documentation, heritage soundmap) will stimulate and support further research and teaching. Our Impulse Responses (sonic signature of spaces) have been picked up by professional sound designers and received highly favourable reviews in sound-expert websites and social media, citing them as excellent for period dramas. Our creative outputs model (based on interviews, archives, and re-enactment of historical scenes) has the significant potential to be recreated in other places, including coastal communities which can benefit from our research on naval dockyards and the social history of Medway towns. Installations based on historical documentation, especially when combined with human voice, can attract further visitors to museums, galleries, and heritage sites thus strengthening local identity, enriching, and boosting the local creative economy. |
| Sectors | Creative Economy,Education,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| URL | https://research.kent.ac.uk/sonic-palimpsest/project-outputs/ |
| Description | This section will be updated as impact emerges; the project ended in December 2022. The project initiated involvement with the public sector through our collaboration with BTEC music and technical theatre courses in a local secondary school. We facilitated discussions on local history and its sound environment throughout the centuries, engaging 16 to 18 year-old students with heritage soundscapes. The workshops we delivered generated the creation of new teaching resources in relation to soundscape and heritage, and empowered students to create compositions which became part of our major installation 'History Revisited' at Chatham Dockyard. The teaching resources are available by contacting our team through our webpage (https://research.kent.ac.uk/sonic-palimpsest/workshops/). Impact on the third sector was achieved through our collaboration with the Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust, which is a registered charity. The dockyard museum is taking a fresh approach in exhibiting history, which has been demonstrated by commissioning our team to create a new soundscape for a permanent installation at the new Ropery Gallery, opened in March 2022. Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust have also agreed to exhibit our installation of the physical version of the Heritage Soundmap in their Steam, Steel and Submarines gallery from April 2023. Museum curators from Chatham dockyard have requested to continue our collaboration and we are in discussions with them to develop new joint projects, and to explore sound-based approaches to exhibiting historical information. The Trust lent us their archived tape recordings for digitisation and restoration. The database our research team created, thus saving the recordings from deterioration, became part of the collection of the museum. The museum is currently working to make this database accessible to scholars and the public. Through our exhibitions in the dockyard museum, visitors were able to engage with sound material, and were encouraged to record information about their experience; this opened a two-way engagement, as there was interaction and dialogue with the public to inform our research. The public engagement demonstrated the relevance of our research and the value of heritage and culture. The museum benefited from our installations, as they enhanced the visitors' cultural experience, contributed to their knowledge of local history, and attracted new audiences. (In addition to the expected numbers of visitors, school groups visited from Canterbury to experience our installation.) We engaged former workers of the dockyard through interviews, which we collected to develop our theoretical and practical sides of our research, allowing those communities to contribute to knowledge. Engaging members of the general public in an aspect of their cultural heritage encourages them to value their own histories and their links to the wider community. Impulse Responses (sonic signatures of spaces) are used routinely in digital signal processing to emulate spaces by sound practitioners. Our free sound library (available from https://research.kent.ac.uk/sonic-palimpsest/impulse-responses/) attracted members of the sound profession and received excellent reviews. Our Sonic Cartography conference brought practitioners and scholars together to exchange views, experiences, and latest research. There are plans in place for future related activity. Scholars from humanities have sought collaboration to further interrogate historical approaches and practice of communicating history through sound by recreating our model in other places of interest. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2022 |
| Sector | Creative Economy,Education,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| Impact Types | Cultural,Societal,Economic |
| Description | Dockyard Museum influence |
| Geographic Reach | Local/Municipal/Regional |
| Policy Influence Type | Contribution to new or improved professional practice |
| Title | Chatham Dockyard Workers - Sonic & Oral History Interviews |
| Description | We conducted oral history interviews for a cross section of former dockyard staff, exploring their histories through training & apprenticeship into their work and careers. Our interviews made a specific focus upon work practices and used enquiries through a sonic frame to elaborate tangible memories of day-to-day experiences and actions in they yard. The goal was to elaborate a more experiential tangible record of the physical actions of making, as opposed to an abstracted historical timeline of events. We interviewed eleven subjects, seven men and four women. |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Provided To Others? | No |
| Impact | This archive database will go into the collection of the Chatham Dockyard Museum and be accessible to future researchers. Excepts from these interviews were used to inspire and structure the "Whispers of the Past" soundscape compositions which have since become a permanent fixture in the museum collection. |
| Title | Digitisation of Chatham Dockyard Oral History Archives |
| Description | The digitisation of archive materials in the museum collection constitutes a foundation for the project. These materials were held in analogue formats (cassette tapes, more than 80 hours of audio), which they were lying dormant with a genuine risk of being gradually deteriorated and permanently ruined. In addition, they were largely inaccessible to scholars and the public. These analogue materials have now been digitised and thoroughly documented. The recordings include recollections of former dockyard workers, apprentices and naval personnel, making them an important archive of local social history. |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | The recordings have been saved from deterioration and are accessible to scholars and the public through the Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust. Our documentation also makes it easy to know the content of each recording before listening. |
| Title | Impulse Responses |
| Description | We recorded and created a library of Impulse Responses (IRs) from the iconic spaces at the Historic Dockyard. IRs enable the acoustic characteristics of a space to be captured. They allow the user to control listening experiences, providing new ways for individuals to engage with spaces and places. IRs are used in digital signal processing to emulate spaces by sound practitioners, and by acousticians to study the acoustic characteristics of spaces. We have made our IR library available through our project's website, including also useful information on the use of IRs for practitioners. We have advertised our free sound library to social media, and it has already attracted members of the sound profession who wish to use it. |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | Capturing and preserving acoustic characteristics of historical spaces, and making these available to scholars and practitioners for further study or use in creative projects. Comments we received on social media include: "Fascinating! What a cool way to capture historical sites. I wish more would do this; there are so many potential uses for IR! Thank you for sharing this with us!!" "Awesome! Sonic ecology should include impulse responses of the places for preservation." |
| URL | https://research.kent.ac.uk/sonic-palimpsest/impulse-responses/ |
| Description | 'Sonic Cartography: Soundscape, Simulation and Re-enactment' conference |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | The 'Sonic Cartography: Soundscape, Simulation and Re-enactment' conference sprang from the 'Sonic Palimpsest' research project. Our conference sought to further the discussion around the research questions which were set in our project, broadening their scope to include audiences that were interested in the relationship between sound, mapping and heritage. In our Call for Works, we had set a series of questions to attract relevant participants and audiences. We invited composers, artists, film makers and scholars interested in environmentally informed practices to come together and debate the issues surrounding the aesthetics, ethics and politics of mapping and storytelling within creative and heritage contexts. We invited two keynote speakers (Prof Laudan Nooshin and Prof Mariana López) who had extensive experience relevant to our enquiries. Our conference saw 94 delegates arriving to present their work from 32 countries to the University of Kent, selected from 180 submission proposals. The conference was extended from two to three days to cover all presentations. We estimate around 160-180 attendees (incl. presenters) during the three days of the conference (28-30 Oct 2022). 'Sonic Cartography' included paper presentations and discussions, installations, workshops, sound works presented in Listening Rooms, two concerts with the Music & Audio Arts Sound Theatre (MAAST, 32 loudspeaker system), and two additional concerts with the Wave Field Synthesis system (WFS, 192 loudspeakers) of the Game of Life foundation from the Netherlands. We collaborated with AFE Lab company and the Game of Life foundation to provide training and residencies to 6 composers, who worked on relevant themes to create music that was performed with the WFS system. Our conference concluded with a round table where we discussed our research, with contributions from many delegates present. The large Sonic Cartography community keeps in touch via our Discord channel we set for this purpose. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://research.kent.ac.uk/sonic-palimpsest/sc2022/ |
| Description | Sonic Palimpsest main website |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | This is the main website and blog of the research project, which offers an account of the project's progress. It is also the main window of the project to the outside world, updating our news, giving information on our major outputs such as the Impulse Response recordings and the Heritage Soundmap, which are accompanied by contextualising texts in accessible language to non-specialist audiences. There is a tab link to all our outputs, including our conference 'Sonic Cartography: Soundscape, Simulation and Re-enactment' with subsections to the call for submissions, the conference programme, registration and useful information for our participants onsite. The project website was announced in specialist mailing lists (CEC, acoustic-ecology, auditory, phonography) and social networking websites. It attracted 4,687 visitors in the last 12 months (6,129 total since its creation) with a peak of 505 visitors (996 views of pages) in the few days before our Sonic Cartography conference. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021,2022,2023 |
| URL | https://research.kent.ac.uk/sonic-palimpsest/ |
| Description | Sonic Palimpsest talk at Aberdeen |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Study participants or study members |
| Results and Impact | The P-I, Dr Aki Pasoulas, was invited by the University of Aberdeen to give a talk on the Sonic Palimpsest research, on 17 November 2022. This was presented at MacRobert Building in Aberdeen and online. The one-and-a-half hour presentation and discussion was focused on the outputs of our research project and on how sound was utilised within the heritage context of Chatham dockyard to immerse and engage the public, providing alternative interpretations of space and place. The presentation stimulated a discussion with the audience afterwards, all of those engaged asking for further information and hoped for a continuation of the project. They also saw how our approach would be applicable to the Aberdeen port, which was established in the 12th Century and, according to what the audience communicated, has a long history. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://www.abdn.ac.uk/music/seminars/17858/ |
| Description | Sonic Palimpsest talk at Lille |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Study participants or study members |
| Results and Impact | Our research team was invited by the organisers of Journée Immersion Sonore to present our research at the University of Lille in France. Our Co-I Andrew Knight-Hill represented our research team in a day of talks and listening sessions on sound and heritage, on 7 December 2022. He presented part of our research that dealt with our compositions with sound examples played to a primary French-speaking audience. The participants found the presentation engaging, and the way we approached intangible heritage to be of great interest to the wider community. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | Soundscapes, Identity and Place: Renegotiating Heritage |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | This was a paper presentation at the conference 'BEAST FEaST 2021: Recalibration', which took place at the University of Birmingham between 22-24 April 2021, and was delivered online to a wide international audience. Our paper was titled 'Soundscapes, Identity and Place: Renegotiating Heritage' and explored how sound is deployed responsibly when working with earwitness' memories and heritage. It emphasised respecting diverse histories and engaging positively with the social and political contexts which constitute the making of place. Our presentation drew many comments online (it was delivered via the host institution's youtube channel), with attendees expressing their interest to follow the development of our research project. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | http://www.beast.bham.ac.uk/beast-feast-2021/saturday-24-april/ |
| Description | Whispers of the Past - paper and composition at MANTIS |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Study participants or study members |
| Results and Impact | This was a paper presentation and a composition performance at the MANTIS 'Sound in Words' festival, at the University of Manchester, on 5-6 March 2022. The paper presented our approach to our geolocated soundwalk 'Whispers of the Past', which we also adapted for a performance at the festival. We discussed how the Oral History Archive at Chatham Historic Dockyard provided us with an insight into the daily routines of people who worked at the dockyard, and how we used responsibly and creatively the sonic memories we obtained to create our compositions. The talk was also streamed as part of an EASTN-DC event (https://eastn-cardiff.uk) held at Cardiff School of Art and Design. We do not know the number of attendees there. The audience at MANTIS found our approach fascinating and followed up with questions. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | http://mantisfestival.com/ |
| Description | Workshops to regional Schools |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | We facilitated two all-day workshops on soundscape composition, at Canterbury Academy, for 6th form students who are studying BTEC in Music. The number of attendees was changing throughout the day, with estimated 12-15 students taking part. During the workshops students were introduced to the project and were set the task of composing a soundscape which explores the sounds of Chatham Historic Dockyard. The workshops focused on using location sound from the dockyard to generate musical ideas, and created links between today's young generation and heritage sites, generating also discussions on the changes in the local environment and social life. We gave the students access to a sound library of field recordings from Chatham Dockyard (created by our research team), which they used as sound material for their new works. The students were very enthusiastic and showed genuine interest in the combination of soundscape and heritage. The students submitted their compositions to our team, which will form part of a collaborative installation we organised in Slip 3, Chatham Historic Dockyard. The installation will remain onsite for 6 days (3-8 May 2022). The material we produced for the workshops are also available through our website to teachers, who can use it for free. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://research.kent.ac.uk/sonic-palimpsest/workshops/ |