HELLO ACE ASSESSOR!
You asked us to
“bring the project to life”
The teams at Blackhall Community Centre and Threads in the Ground have prepared this webpage to do just that.
Please keep the link to yourself. It’s for ACE eyes only.
Enjoy!
Our artist collaborators are…
Bert Verso
Bert Verso is a DJ, producer, beat head and all-round positive force within Newcastle’s effervescent underground over the last two decades.
Verso has long been known for his chameleonic nature, bringing a splash of colour and eclecticism to the more percussive and rhythm-led branches of hip hop and electronic music.
Jacob Polley
Jacob Polley was born in Carlisle, Cumbria. His most recent book of poems is Material Properties (2023). His fourth book of poems, Jackself (2016), won the T.S. Eliot Prize. His previous books are The Brink (2003), Little Gods (2006) and The Havocs (2012), and a novel, Talk of the Town (2009), all published by Picador, UK. Talk of the Town won the Somerset Maugham Award in 2010. Jacob received an Eric Gregory Award in 2002, and both The Brink and The Havocs were shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize.
In 2011, he was Arts Queensland’s poet-in-residence, and he was Visiting Fellow Commoner in the Arts at Trinity College, Cambridge, 2005-7. He has also held residencies at the Civitella Ranieri Foundation and at the Wordsworth Trust.
In 2004, he was named one of the ‘Next Generation’ of the twenty best new poets in Britain. He teaches at Newcastle University and lives with his family on the north-east coast.
The Illustrated Lab
Making illustrations to learn how the world works.
“My name is Jenni, and I’m an illustrator specialising in drawing natural science, particularly biomedical visualisation. Plus, I love a bit of irreverence, so the madder I can make my science, the better!
I have a degree in animation, a masters in medical art, and a genuine enthusiasm for knowledge so I create carefully researched, fun and fascinating drawings for your everyday life. I’ve made it my literal job to bring wonder to your everyday through my unashamedly blunt, enthusiastic and meticulous drawings.”
Little Comets
“Famed for impromptu gigs in venues such as university lecture theatres, trams, and supermarket bakery isles, Little Comets have taken their maverick and mischievous approach to music and ran with it since their founding in 2008, taking an uncompromising approach to creating music by means nothing shy of partisan. This adherence to their own style has meant dropping a slew of music labels to be almost entirely self-produced to avoid hierarchical interference, and this attitude to creation is inspiring, ahead of its time”
- The Sugarmill
Andy Martin
Andy Martin is a photographer and filmmaker from Sunderland, County Durham. He has a passion for the North East, its industry and people. His experience as a practitioner spans almost 20 years. He is especially drawn to working with marginalised communities who are still living through the cultural, social and economic changes of the region, giving them a platform to tell their stories.
Andy works primarily with older, higher quality analogue processes – medium and large format film cameras to tell their stories. He is also one of a handful of people in the world specialising in a photographic technique known as wet collodion process which dates back to 1851.The resulting images are produced entirely by hand on sheets of metal and glass – tintypes and ambrotypes – with no two the same.
Source Audio
Mine Reverb
We captured “impulse response” of the drift mine at Beamish living museum. A process where sound is blasted into a space with a very neutral sounding speaker. A sensitive and neutral microphone records what bounces back. We then digitally subtract the original sound wave from the captured audio, and you’re left with an approximation of the reverb of the space which can then be applied to any recording. We think we might be the first people to capture the impulse response of a British coal mine - possibly any coal mine.
Archival Recordings
With the help of the archivist of Brass Bands England, some private record collectors, and the British Library, we managed to track down what we think are the earliest recordings of a colliery band - dating 1903.
DMA Band
We dug out the musica scores for the pieces we had found in archival recordings. We then asked the Durham Miners’ Association Band to play those same pieces. Which they did. Beautifully.
Here is a video of our recording session with the DMA band.