England’s East Coast is rightly acknowledged as a site of extraordinary heritage and unique cultural identity forged by a striking physical landscape. While it has produced a multitude of sounds of wildlife, waves, weather, bombs, fog horns, fishing boats, and music, connections between landscape, sound, and culture have frequently been overlooked. In musicology, discussion of landscape has been oriented towards visual representations and their parallels in written musical texts. Moreover, discussion of English music and landscape has suffered from negative associations with ethnocentric nationalism. In heritage studies, curatorial expertise and visitor experience has also traditionally been visually oriented.
It is an urgent task to understand connections between sound heritage and environment. A focus on sound, rather than music, enables consideration of myriad environmental impacts on a range of communities. Sound heritage is of increasing interest to heritage organisations both as a powerful insight into the past and as part of inclusive, multisensory visitor experiences. Most importantly, many sites and examples of sound heritage on the East Coast are at risk due to coastal erosion, climate change, and the changing purpose of sites and other damage leading to the loss of historic buildings.
This ambitious project seeks to preserve, reconstruct, and understand the soundscapes of the East Coast. The transdisciplinary team will use cutting-edge techniques of digital scanning and 3D modelling to reconstruct the sounds of key sites over periods of change (both environmental and in terms of human activity) and produce new, immersive digital environments for research and visitor experience. They will shift away from text-based studies of compositions to generate an ecological model of musical practice and landscape. Finally, work with heritage and community organisations and schools will situate the research within existing communities and their experience of place, and produce new workshops and creative outputs.
The project team will pursue their work through four interrelated workstreams (WSs) covering three case study sites: (1) Aldeburgh coast; (2) Northumberland coast; (3) Seaton Delaval:
WS1: Sounds and Spaces will use the team’s expertise in computer science, architecture, geomorphology, and musicology to understand the changing landscape of key East Coast sites over three centuries and to reconstruct the key historical soundscapes.
WS2: Music history, ecology, ethnography takes an innovative approach to the musicology of the East Coast. The team will produce a new study connecting music around twentieth-century Aldeburgh to natural and industrial soundscapes; produce a study of the sonic history of Seaton Delaval, and undertake an ethnographic study of engagement with the physical landscape in folk, jazz and community musics in Northumberland.
WS3: Creative engagement involves work throughout the project with community groups, schools, and performers to generate new creative outputs in the form of a composition, sound installations, and performances.
WS4: Heritage will use the findings of WSs 1 and 2 to create new, multisensory VR experiences, sound walks, and a digital toolkit of best practice for sound heritage.
By reconstructing and understanding the East Coast’s soundscapes and exploring this knowledge with communities, the project offers wide-ranging benefits for the public understanding of cultural heritage and the impact of environmental change, speaking to growing global recognition of the significance of intangible heritage and the challenges of sustainability. The project will act as a model for curation of sound heritage more widely, promising national and international impact from its case studies.