CREATIVE SOUNDSCAPES

ENGAGING NEIGHBOURHOODS: CREATIVE SOUNDSCAPES

Discover the Sounds of Calderdale: Community-Created Soundscapes
As part of our ongoing Engaging Neighbourhoods initiative across Calderdale, we invite you to explore this unique collection of creative soundscapes — first showcased during the Open Space 70 Arts Trail in July 2023.

These immersive audio experiences were co-created by talented artist facilitators in collaboration with members of local Calderdale community groups, capturing the spirit, voices, and stories of our neighbourhoods:

Presented by: 
THE SPACE COMMUNITY HUB, RASTRICK
WOMENCENTRE, HALIFAX
CALDER COMMUNITY CARES, CORNHOLME
RASTRICK HIGH SCHOOL

LISTEN, 2023

Medium; digital collage, projection mapping, sound art.
Artists: David McFarlane with pupils from Rastrick High School.
‘Listen’ is an exploration of the quickly changing balance of the sounds of the natural world.

Students from Rastrick High School have each created a piece of sound art responding to the local landscape, taking inspiration from the natural environment around the Calder Valley, sound walks around the school, and the work of sound artists R. Murray Schafer, Hildegard Westerkamp, and Delia Derbyshire.

We encourage you to take some time out of your day to stop, be silent, and listen carefully to the changing sounds of the world around us. With thanks to environmental expert Paul Knights for sharing his knowledge with us.

Below the video of the students' sound art pieces together with the digital collage, are six photographs of the diorama in situ at Heptonstall Museum undercroft as part of Open Space 70.

Three creative soundscapes based on poems from Engaging Neighbourhoods group projects with The Space at Field Lane, Women's Centre Halifax and Calder Community Cares.

Creative Facilitators: Emma Decent (creative writing) and Alison Cooper (music and sound editing).
Poems and spoken word: participants of three Engaging Neighbourhoods community groups.

1. Circles and Cycles, 2023
Artists: Rachel Hawthorn, Emma Decent and people from The Space, Rastrick

Everything exists in circles and cycles. We are part of nature and we live within the great cycle of nature - the turning of the seasons, the magnificence of our planet, our beautiful bountiful home.

We made felt balls from natural sheep’s wool and dyes and woven globes from varieties of vines we gathered locally (on display in the tree at the Wavy Steps, Bridge Gate, Hebden Bridge). We also spent time in nature and wrote and recorded our words and poems.

Today I noticed the circles of plants, life and the flies on the stumps of trees. The long life of rotting timber.

Stitching Hope, 2023
Artists: Saima Kaur, Emma Decent and members of Women’s Centre, Halifax

For centuries women have come together to create embroidery and textile art. Starting with the emblem of hope, we each constructed a tapestry that stitches together our thoughts and feelings about our own lives, reflecting on the environment and our sense of community (on display in Heptonstall Museum Undercroft). We also recorded some spoken word which has been woven together here as sound art.

Hope is life.
Hope tells you you are alive.
That’s it.

A Place of Peace, 2023
Artists: Kim Hubball, Emma Decent and members of Calder Community Cares, Cornholme, Todmorden

Surrounded by the natural environment of Cornholme, we explored the 180-year-old cyanotype process using leaves and plants foraged locally to create ‘photogram’ prints on fabric, exposed in the sun (on display in the Undercroft at Heptonstall Museum). We also experimented with creative writing on the theme of where I live, reflecting on its natural beauty and positive human connections.

Trees surround the noise of the birds,
the traffic, the voices.
Life feels like it’s a place of peace