<%@LANGUAGE="VBSCRIPT" CODEPAGE="1252"%> Jackie Calderwood Media Arts

 

Living Voices is a poetic experience inviting you to listen to eight recordings of local people living with the diagnosis of dementia who share their wisdom, experience and thoughts, whilst reflecting on the metaphor of the tree. Living Voices Scanning a QR code outside the Playhouse to hear audio under a shady tree at the Living Voices Showcase Listening to audio inside the Playhouse at the Living Voices Showcase

What kind of tree would you be?
...Oak, Cherry, Durian, Sequoia... are some of those described.

This initial phase of the project was marked with a showcase event celebrating the living voices of people with dementia, and the family, friends and organisations that support them. The showcase featured an indoor-outdoor audio installation, interactive activities and public information on Saturday 26th May 2012 in the Community Studio at Salisbury Playhouse, as part of the Dementia Awareness Week with the Alzheimer's Society. Thanks to support from Salisbury Playhouse, Salisbury Area Alzheimer's Society, Jackie Calderwood and De Montfort University.

The trail below contains the audio as presented at the showcase. Click on a 'speaker' icon to listen to audio, read extracts from the audio, or scroll on to the next audio.

  • The trail can also be played on a smartphone whilst walking in the woods, using QR codes - as demonstrated at the Salisbury Showcase (contact Jackie if you would like to host a walk!)
  • To play the audio on your iphone (no QR code needed), first install the free empedia iphone app, in 'settings' choose 'enable experimental guides' and then download the 'Living Voices' Guide. Although the map shows the area of the Salisbury showcase (outside the Playhouse) you can use the trail anywhere. Simply go for a walk in your favourite park or forest and choose your own trees to stand by whilst you listen to the Living Voices. - We'd love to hear how you get on!

Once you've listened to the audio, please click here to take a short survey and leave your comments anonymously. This will help to develop the project, and inform Jackie's research. It should only take a few minutes and you can do as much or as little as you like. Many thanks in advance for your help. (For more info. contact Jackie.)


Living Voices is a voluntary arts project led by media artist and researcher Jackie Calderwood, in collaboration with Julia Burton, Alzheimer's Society and Wendy Sullivan, Clean Change Company. Special thanks to all those who took part, contributing their voice. Thanks to Tony Lahive at De Montfort University for help with audio eq.

The project was inspired by the comment of a service-user during an interview Jackie was filming for the Salisbury Area Alzheimer's Society Services DVD (2010). Asked if there was anything else they would like to say, one gentleman interrupted the other's response to say 'hang on a minute - it's not very often that we get asked if we have something to say!' Living Voices seeks to redress this balance, inviting people living with dementia to share 'anything else you would like to say' - about the wisdom and stories of their own life, as well as their experience of coping with disease. The project aims to combine these personal Living Voices with pervasive media technologies (subject of Jackie's doctoral research) using installation, internet, mobile and location-responsive audio to extend the experience out into gallery, conferences and woodland walks - bringing the audio and the stories voiced to life in a whole new way when listening at different paces and places. Another central part of the project was also to explore ways of using 'Clean Language' (from the work of David Grove) as a methodology in arts-practice and research. Having decided that trees would act as 'placeholders' for the voices of individula people, it would be important to invite people to have a say in what kind of tree they or their 'story' might be like. Wendy Sullivan, Director of the Clean Change Company, is an expert trainer and facilitator in 'Clean', working with client-generated metaphor to develop and model empowering qualities of an individual's own 'landscape'. Wendy generously took part in th interviews, inviting people to explore and develop what kind of tree they (and their words shared) might like to be.

This is the first stage of the project which we hope will develop into a woodland walk with an online or touring installation; potentially leading into an interdisciplinary health-arts-educational research project.

Jackie has also presented Living Voices at the first International Wellbeing Conference, Birmingham, 2011 (with thanks to AgeUK for postgraduate research presentation bursary award) and at I-Docs 2012 interactive documentary symposium, Bristol (with thanks to De Montfort University for bursary award).

For further information, please contact jackie.calderwood@btopenworld.com

 


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