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Tuesday, 24 September
Rural Hub Towns
Inclusivity
Accessibility
In the summer of 2024, a community in one of our Rural Hub Towns discovered new ways to connect to local green spaces.
Bramshall Road Park is a much-loved open space in Uttoxeter, which offers a brook, nature conservation area, woods, playing fields, two playparks and a skatepark. It hosts several well-attended family fun day events over the summer and offers something for almost everyone.
Still, we wanted to take a different approach to exploring and connecting with this space alongside the local community...
A local special needs group played a central role in the project. This group consists of 15 adults, joined by their support workers, carers, family members, and volunteers, all eager to contribute to the planning and activities.
With such a wide range of interests within the group, we made sure to keep the art activities open-ended, focusing more on the creative process and the joy of making rather than the final product. We also prioritised the social aspect of the experience. In addition to this, we held smaller, more relaxed sessions for younger participants outside of the group, ensuring a comfortable support ratio and flexibility in how the activities were delivered.
Our Community Engagement Officer in Uttoxeter, Aster Woods, invited artists to visit the park and submit their project proposals. They all had experience working with people with additional needs, worked in different mediums, and were based in the Midlands. After two community consultation events, we went ahead with a proposal from experimental sound artist and SEN teacher Tom Peel.
He led a series of walks in the park, connecting people to nature using sound and touch.
We used a range of equipment including a PlantWave, which takes tiny electric signals from living plants via sticky pad sensors and turns them into audio. Different plants sound like different things! It’s also possible to put the sensor on a hand and become part of the electrical circuit playing the sound.
We also experimented with hydrophones (underwater microphones) in the brook – picking up fascinating different sounds depending on if you left them under the water or threw them rhythmically onto the surface. Alongside these sounds, we used a range of musical instruments such as a hand harp, a small drum, a tambourine and some bells.
These sounds were all mixed together using a loop pedal, which Tom operated. He used his beatboxing skills to lay down a beat; we then extracted sounds from nature to layer over the top, and finally, we joined in with the instruments. It sounded wonderful and was great fun to do as a group.
The sound was played through speakers made from recycled water bottles, a perfect size and shape to hold in your lap or hug. The speaker section is mounted on the base of the water bottle, and the whole thing vibrates with the sound. Air puffs out of the mouth of the bottle, and is forceful enough that you feel it on your cheek and it can move your hair! Because the bottles are transparent, it’s also a lot of fun to take leaves or small seeds and put them in the bottle, to watch them move around in time to the beat.
The walks were very well received. One participant, Alison, added some wordless singing which harmonised perfectly with the sound generated by a willow tree. She carried on singing those notes well after the walk was over. Another participant, the grandmother of a boy with combined ADHD and autism, said it was the most fun they had together in a very long time.
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