My twin brother Curtis (find him here) is making a podcast series called Class Divide that explores the complex and damaging issues of education inequality. It is based in the area where we grew up - Whitehawk in Brighton, and has been years in the making with deep research and interviews with many experts and the people who have suffered at the hands of the cruel, unfair system that both of us experienced first hand.
As part of that series Curtis has invited me to help young people in the area create some sound art that will form the 10th episode of the series. The aim is to give these young people an opportunity to make their own work and share something of their creation; stories, sound art, field recordings, live performance.
Through a series of workshops held at the brilliant Crew Club, I want to help them explore the rich and fulfilling world of sound and listening.
There is a beautiful cyclic nature to this project as both Curtis and myself were inspired by a group of visiting musicians when we were at school, and although I never got to study music as there weren’t enough places, this intervention changed and shaped the course of my life.
Photo by Jack Nielsen @ The Crew Club
Session 0
Last week I went and shared my ideas with a handful of young people that attend The Crew Club. I wanted to ask them if they would like to work with me on this collaborative sound art project, as too often young people aren’t given a choice. I was nervous about this session - what if they didn’t like it? What if they thought it was too weird? I shouldn’t have worried. Young people are more open minded than we give them credit for.
We discussed listening, sound art, field recording, John Cage’s 4’33” and then explored the Crew Club with contact microphones and electromagnetic microphones. The latter was a big hit, the young people amazed at the hidden sound world all around them. Finally we ended the evening playing electronic sound sources and mixing them with recordings we’d made around the space. This was my favourite part of the evening and we even attracted people from nearby who were interested in what we were up to. I’m looking forward to helping share some hidden, (neglected) sounds and voices from Whitehawk.
I’m excited about this project, it feels important in ways that are obvious but others that aren’t (yet) and I have ambitious hopes for what it could be. It coincides with a period of intense creative expansion and learning for me and it feels right that these two things should be happening at the same time. I’m excited to share it with young people in Whitehawk, I bet I’ll learn a lot from my young collaborators. Here are some more pictures from that first session, all taken by Jack Nielsen at The Crew Club.
Finally thanks to The Crew Club for their support and all the work they do in Whitehawk.
