Cliffe Castle, Keighley

29th March 2023

We teamed up Get Out More and their Wellbeing Wednesday walking group to see if we could invoke A Sense Of Place using sound, and tap into people’s creativity at the same time.

The group meets most Wednesday at Cliffe Castle, Keighley, to walk around the park, usually stopping every now and again to do a mindful exercise or two. After the walk the group go to the cafe for a drink and to do a craft activity.

Nicky and David joined in with the group in February and March, with David recording sound and showing people how to use their phones to record sound for themselves, and Nicky providing expert help with drawing activities.

Recordings from those activities, along with recordings participants made themselves elsewhere during that time, were made into an audio track that was played in the cafe at 2:15pm on 29th March 2023 as people listened and crafted.


Informative, interactive, different.

- audience feedback, Keighley, 29th March 2023


Climate Impact

We have tried to make this a low-carbon event by design.

The biggest carbon impact of this event was probably audience travel to the event. The venue is close to public transport links, but most people would have arrived by car. However, by far the majority of people that attended lived in the same postcode as the venue.

Our next Carbon Cost would be the venue. By using a cafe that is normally open at that time, with a group that normally uses that venue at that time, it feels like we not doing too much extra harm.

Our final Carbon Costs were in the materials we used. This was mitigated by all the contents of the listening kits coming from end of line ‘scrap’ stock left over that we collectively had lying around.


Great way of enjoying nature. Attaining new skill of drawing.

- group feedback, Keighley, 29th March 2023


Sound

Audio: A Sense of Place, Cliffe Castle, Keighley. Field Recordings.

The audio is 25 minutes of gathered sounds, arranged in sections that last roughly 5 minutes. There is a 15 second gap of silence between sections.

Deep listening prompts based off the work of Pauline Oliveros were displayed during the performance and and listed below.

All the audio was recorded with a smart phone.

1) Wednesday 22nd Feb 2023, Cliffe Castle, Keighley

  • A minutes silence
  • Some things we did
  • The mower
  • The group
  • Dogs

2) Late February 2023, early Morning, high above Silsden

  • Feeding the animals

3) 8th March 2023, East Riddlesden Hall

  • Wind on last year’s oak leaves
  • Scout Hut

4) 10th March 2023, St. Ives, Bingley

  • The day it snowed

5) 22nd February 2023, Cliffe Castle

6) Monday 13th March 2023, Abbeyfield, Bingley

  • Daffodils, Wordsworth
  • Leisure, William Henry Davies

7) Wednesday 29th March 2023, The Cafe,Cliffe Castle

Pictures of Well Being Wednesday activities during the time A Sense Of Place was being created.