ANCESTRAL REVERB
Exploring carbon heritage through sound, writing, and pictures.
What is your carbon heritage?
Carbon Heritage is more than the billions of tonnes of coal our families have burnt into the atmosphere.
It’s more than the generations of innovation and engineering, the train-tracks, engines, and wealth built up over the sigh of an empire. It’s the remembered feel of granda’s callouses, the tobacco and dust smell.
It’s the cold feel of the trumpet mouth-piece on your lips. It’s the generations of campaigning and demonstration that built our civil rights.
It’s more than that. It’s what we inherit. It’s what we’re doing now, what we pass on. So what is your carbon heritage?
Playing with sounds
We have tracked down some of the oldest known recordings of colliery pit brass bands – from 1903. We dug out the old scores for the pieces and recorded the current Durham Miners’ Association band playing those same archival pieces.
We then journeyed down an old drift coal mine at Beamish (the living museum), digitally capturing the reverb of the mine so that we can give any recording the sound of that space.
We’re working with the brilliant musician Bert Verso to weave together the brass recordings into an electronic piece.
Words across generations
We are gathering together retired miners from around the North East of England. We’re chatting with them and their children about ideas of Carbon Heritage - what are they proud of, what do they want to see carried forward, what is it like to observe climate change developing as a fossil-fuel family.
We are working with the poet, Jacob Polley, to craft a spoken word piece drawing on our conversations with the miners and their families. The piece will honour the graft and the stories, while looking to the future - our responsibilities and our power.
We’d love to hear from you.
Do you have something to tell us about your Carbon Heritage? Or just want to stay informed? Send us a note :)
