Newcastle University – Anne Whitehead

8 April 20258 April 2025

Insights Public Lecture

In December 2024, David and I marked the end of the Sounding the Angel project by contributing a public lecture to Newcastle University’s Insights lecture series. The sound recording from the project was reinstalled in the Arches Sound Project to coincide with the lecture, so that people had the chance to hear it in full before and after the lecture.

David and I presented the lecture together, in recognition that it had been a collaboration between us at every step of the way. We began by describing our own encounter with the memorial at the Angel, which opened out into a broader description of the project and its aims. We then focused on David’s recording of the sounds of the site across the seasons of the year, before letting the voices of our participants lead the conversation with their reflections on what it had meant to them to leave memorial tokens at the Angel. We closed by pulling the different strands together into a reflection on what it means to use sound as a means of recording a spontaneous memorial.

We had some fantastic responses from those who attended the lecture and it was great to see so much interest in the project. Some of those who came had heard about the project from the early radio broadcasts and followed its progress in this blog, while others had encountered it for the first time through the lecture.

We gave the last word to the Angel, playing David’s recording of its metal structure contracting at the end of a hot summer’s day in our last visit to the site together. Amplified through the audio system of the lecture theatre, the sound reverberated through the floor, even as it had radiated out from the base of the Angel on the day that we recorded. It felt like a fitting close to a project called Sounding the Angel!

You can watch the lecture here.

8 April 20258 April 2025

World Health Day 2025

child's drawing of dolphin in sea — Film still, Where We Will Go (2023) by Kate Sweeney

Yesterday marked World Health Day, which this year marks the start of a global campaign focused on improving maternal and newborn health. To mark this initiative, Newcastle University published a blog that profiled the leading research in this area that is being carried out at Newcastle.

It was a privilege to see Where Will We Go featured in the blog alongside medical research advances, and to see Judith Rankin’s wider research in this area recognised and celebrated. Our project sought to create a supportive resource for parents who lose a twin at birth, so that they could hear the voices and experiences of the families we worked with. It was very special to hear from the parents who participated in the project that they would use the film to speak with their children about their lost siblings when the time was right to do so.

You can read the blog post about the work in newborn and maternal health at Newcastle University here.

28 June 202428 June 2024

Arches

Next week sees the installation of our sound piece in the Arches that mark the entrance to the main quadrangle of Newcastle University. Built in 1911 from a donation by north-east mining magnate John Bell Simpson, the brick structure now houses the Arches Sound Project, which projects four-track audio pieces through the microphones that have been installed in each of its corners. Passers-by can sit on the benches under the Arches to listen to the sound works in full, or they might encounter fragments of them as they walk through, whether to visit the campus or to cut through it to the Royal Victoria Infirmary beyond.

In the area just in front of the Arches, Antony Gormley’s Clasp has been installed, a semi- abstract sculpture that depicts two people embracing. The sculpture was installed on this site to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of The Angel in Gateshead, and our project both recognises and reinforces the line of connection between the two. Those listening to Sounding the Angel can also see the Clasp sculpture, so that the two works are brought into a new conversation with each other.

Turning to look in the opposite direction, one of the trees that has been planted immediately behind the Arches is a handkerchief or ghost tree, named after its beautiful, white flower-like bracts that flutter in the breeze, resembling innumerable pocket handkerchiefs. The bracts have now mostly fallen from the tree and been dispersed by the wind, which resonates with how the memorial tributes are described by participants in the sound work.

The installation, which lasts 30 minutes, is played on the hour every hour from 6am – 10pm, from 1-7 July. It comprises four parts, organized according to the seasons, and you can hear two counterpointed conversations with participants who have left memorial tributes at The Angel. These are combined with field recordings from the site across the seasons, documenting the sounds of nature and the vibrations resonating through The Angel itself. The piece is punctuated by a loud boom that was made by the metal of the Angel contracting after the heat of a summer’s day.