Hut-in-Quarantine
Adapting to a period of tinny reflections and the sounds of silence and shutdown.
Luckily the hut was already in our garden for renovations and new installments when lockdown came.
Thanks to ACE funding to continue R&D with the hut and prepare for touring, our mission continues. The hut-in-garden-lockdown is a peaceful studio refuge to focus on ideas, training and tinkering.
This project is strangely, perfectly placed and adaptable to communicate and create from isolation: new equipment such as the podcasting Zoom L-8 portable mixing desk and Rødemaster Podmic has been tested in-hut: I received the first phone call to line-in from our wonderful sound and radio art mentor Euan Maco MacAleece, talking me through some buttons and levels remotely as we went. I’m learning to work with this to receive calls from near and far, and record conversations towards an archive, a production of interviews and podcasts… we shall see… And, even if we can’t physically go to radio heritage sites in Cornwall and Harwich, this way, the research can go on!
I’m so grateful for all the support of this project and our wider creative community! We adjust online, try to keep the live feeling of connection with some fine-tuning and amplifying things we have to work with… Maco has been feeding me listening inspiration and articles, and we continue our training, workflow and planning; Lucy (GlowingPhrases) skypes project management sessions… David of Arts In Development facilitates soulful digging in group WhatsApp ‘artist practice walks’… Walking The Land organises artist walks together, apart…. SVA launches Deepbed Radio and ruffles up the archives of Resound Radio… The radio zeitgeist is just getting stronger…
Especially, I’ve loved recording birdsong and the sounds of silence.
With huge respect for Arts Council England’s immediate response in this crisis in offering emergency support for artists! And gratitude for being directly helped with that Emergency Response Funding after other upcoming projects have been cut and we readjust.
Many thanks to Arts Council England for supporting both this vital R&D towards a way of working with future partners, preparation for hut to take to the road and sounds to the airwaves.
