A few months ago I wrote about the launch of the Who Owns Brighton (WOB) project. Since then we have conducted four participatory research workshops and an Action Day. In this post, Dr. Bethan Prosser reflects on one of these workshops which she offered to community researchers interested in creative, sensory and place-based methods. The workshop introduced us to Bethan's participatory listening research toolbox for community researchers, which we tried out around the Circus Street redevelopment. Here are her reflections on what we learned that day.
I’ve been blown away by both the energy and commitment of the community researchers involved in WOB as well as the amount of rich data they’ve gathered about Circus Street. So it was a brilliant opportunity to offer some of the tools I have been developing in my academic research through this workshop and learn together about the site sonically. Participatory listening research is a way of listening with others to the environment to generate new knowledge and discoveries, whilst embracing different listening experiences, practices and positionalities.
We met on a Saturday morning at Barnard Community Centre and started off with a Deep Listening exercise to tune into our ears. I then led a silent walk down Carlton Hill into Circus Street and gave everyone the task of spending time silently listening around the site, before capturing observations. It was interesting to note the initial challenge of being quiet – when the group had so much to catch up on and share about their latest findings. But people relaxed into the activities and many enjoyed being given the permission just to immerse themselves in the place they have been researching.
As we walked back up the hill, we paired up to share what we’d noticed through listening. These conversations continued into a fascinating group discussion once back indoors, which I structured through thinking about four types of “sound stimuli”: the notable qualities of the sounds; sound surprises; ideas sparked by sounds; and stories or memories triggered through listening (from my PhD project - Prosser, 2022).
A quiet place
The overall impression was quietness and silence – “like the volume had been turned down”. Absent were the “sounds of home” or human interaction, other than at the Dance Space or a pop-up market that was setting up. The market came as a surprise, especially as most people had experienced the space as “dead” and “sterile” during previous visits.
Mostly Circus Street felt like a place to pass through, cut off and disconnected from the rest of the city. This sparked discussion about what was promised by the developers - buzzing, vibrant and award-winning – in contrast to what was sonically experienced there. One person noted “it’s the least circusy experience ever”. With others drawing on their historical research to think about what the soundscape of the old Fruit and Vegetable market that was there might have been like.
After lunch, we moved onto drawing sound maps using maps of the site, tracing paper and arts materials. These continued the themes of the site being a “space of passage”, with “sound sanctuaries” of human activity centred around the Dance Space and the green square where the market was setting up. The buildings’ ventilation systems were the main dominant sounds in the central area, with a lack of birdsong. This was pinned to the empty birdboxes, with one person writing: “bird boxes look sad, just as empty as the flats”. Interestingly, three of the maps used the word “ghosts”: “ghost circus” ; “the ghosts of what could have been”; and “the only life here is ghosts”.
So what contributions did we make to the project’s research questions through this workshop? Although it was just a one-day listening snapshot, we did make some contributions to the questions about what the redevelopment has produced and how people experience it.
Our key overall findings are:
· the redevelopment has produced a distinct acoustic environment, which contrasts with the surrounding city
· there’s an uncomfortable juxtaposition between what was promised by the developers and what has been produced sonically e.g. “buzzing” vs “sterile space”
· these acoustic dimensions impact the way people behave in the site e.g. a place to move though, not stop or interact in
· listening and soundmapping can aid reflections and provide insightful engagement with a redevelopment site during a community research project
Thank you to everyone that took part, the working group for organising, Barnard Community Centre and the funders (Civic Power Community Action Fund, ESRC South Coast Doctoral Training Partnership and the University of Sussex Knowledge Exchange and Innovation Fellowship Fund).
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