Critical Considerations: creative project planning

Gongs of Teesside

I plan to develop Gongs of Teesside (GoT) into a substantial (co-creative) research project with its next phase beginning this September.  I am currently thinking about the design of the project, and the potential and risks of a co-creative research approach.  The purpose of this writing is to outline the project then to unpack some of the key considerations in its design.

Project Update

Seed funding was awarded for the project by UKRI via a ‘Climate Hackathon’ hosted by Leeds University and Leeds Conservatoire in June 2023.  The initial idea arose out of previous projects (Sonic Allotments, Sonic Arts Week, 2021 and Sound Field, Cheeseburn, 2022) where I had used a tam tam (large Chinese gong) in various outdoor settings and found that it engendered multiple forms of public engagement.  In meeting local 84-year old master blacksmith, Peat Oberon, I found an extraordinary collaborator in Teesside to develop a method to make gongs out of steel. This has also led to introductions to a network of Teessiders currently or previously connected with the local steel industry. 

This first phase of funded development has just been completed with a series of scoping dialogues.  The intention of these was to learn more about the local cultural and socio-economic context, meet potential co-creators, and to use these understandings to inform the project plan going forwards.  I first consulted with my local artistic community as well as the local Combined Authority, Council, University and FE Colleges.  Following this, I held exploratory conversations with Teesside people associated with the steel industry, education and employment, and environmental/food resilience projects. 

Conversations took place with:

• Miki, freelance community artist: Miki is connected with several local communities, including second-generation immigrants from Pakistan whose parents worked in the local steel industry on arrival in the area.

• Malcolm at Creative Cutting Services Ltd: Malcolm has worked for over 30 years in the steel sector, cutting and supplying steel to order and employing a small team.

• Angela at Land of Iron, Skinningrove:  Angela grew up in the steel working community and now works at the museum, aiming to educate the public and young people in particular about the local heritage around steel and iron.

• Heather Walker, ‘Creative Place Programme Manager’, Tees Valley Combined Authority: Heather has contacts across the region, particularly with local educators aiming to improve engagement of young people.

• Ruth at Teesside Archives: Ruth is currently engaged in archiving artefacts preserved from the Redcar blast furnace that was recently demolished as part of the controversial Teesworks Development.

• Liz at Barefoot Kitchen CIC: Liz’s grandparents were all steel workers and she begun her own career in the steel industry.  As a Quality Assurance Inspector, she then began to understand the environmental impact of the industry and changed direction: Barefoot Kitchen is a social enterprise delivering food projects and local food catering provision.

• Catherine, North of England Lead, Gaia Foundation: Catherine is heading up various projects focused on supporting local sustainable food growers and seed sovereignty.

• Billy and Stuart, retired steelworkers:  Billy worked his whole career in the steel industry on Teesside, mostly as an engineman overseeing a steam pump in the steel works.  Stuart worked from apprentice to co-owner of the recently closed William Lane Foundry on Southbank. They now work together volunteering for local charities, including at ‘Nature’s World’ site, Middlesbrough.

My understanding of relevant themes has been deepened by listening to these personal narratives and knowledge, offering a different quality and complexity to the context for the GoT project.  These themes include the continued sense of grieving for the loss of community following the demise of the steel industry; changes to local employment opportunities for young people today/employment practices of global businesses; the politics and perceived corruption surrounding the Teesworks development; and the significance of certain waypoints and landmarks in the area.  New community groups and geographical areas have come to light.  I am still processing these dialogues, but further analysis will be core to formulating the project going forwards.

On a practical note, I will plan a series of possible ways forward with the project so that my further research is not dependent on the outcome of funding applications I intend to make.  Equally, the project will be influenced and permeated by the agendas and requirements of any funding bodies and organisations that do support it.  So it seems essential that these factors are incorporated into and considered as part of the research analysis.  (Kester, 2004).

At the time of writing, the outline of the project is:

                  May 24 – September 24

·      Fundraising and partnership building

September 24 – April 25

·      Fabrication of 8 Steel Gongs and Stands with blacksmiths, Peat Oberon and Matt Snape.  (Possibly involving young adults from Middlesbrough College and other local FE Institutions)

·      Relationship building, consultation and project co-design with co-creators from local community groups.  (4 – 5 groups).  As well as meetings, this process may also involve sharing my sound art practice in the landscape, using ‘deep listening’ and sounding to develop understanding of each person’s relationship with the environment.

May 25 – August 25

·      Planning and undertaking community ‘sonic actions’ with the gongs.  (Form and stated purpose of each ‘action’ to be defined through the co-creative process.  However, one idea is for each group to devise a series of events along the ‘Black Path’ from East Cleveland to Redcar and Middlesbrough, the long walk to work for steelworkers in the past.  This route would end as near as possible to the current Teesworks site.)

August 25 – Dec 25

·      Developing documentary video and audio into a public gallery installation with the gongs.

As I continue to scope the project, I am aware of the need to develop my understanding of the associated methodologies I am exploring.  This is explored in the writing below.

On Research Context and Methodology – revised, April 2024

In 2002, Westerkamp posed the question “Can soundscape composition initiate ecological change?” (Westerkamp, 2002).  Cummings and Miller (2007) asked how the purpose of environmental sound art could go beyond the personal or the aesthetic. 

The question of how environmental sound art might seek to be more explicitly activist has since resurfaced: a recent Aural Pluralities Network (CHASE Doctoral Partnership) event (March, 2024) was entitled “Ecological Listening: From sound art to action”.  Artist-researchers have proposed compelling frameworks for making sound art that promotes pro-environmental behaviour through ‘interdisciplinary action’ (Barclay, 2019).   Gilmurray (2017,  (2021 & 2022) advocates for a new field: ‘Ecological Sound Art’ which demonstrates ‘active engagement with contemporary ecological issues’ in which listening and sounding are themselves ‘ecological’ processes.  Gilmurray (2017), usefully outlines five areas of ‘Ecological Sound Art’ with reasonably distinct characteristics and/or methodologies:

1. i) Sound works that are metaphors for environmental events or processes, which facilitate a more personal connection to the issues.

2. ii) Using sound as a medium to explore the interconnections between humans, technologies and the natural world.

3. iii) Works which often use particular technology to allow us to hear sounds that are not normally accessible to or experienced by the human ear.

4. iv) Communicating data through ‘sonification’.

5. v) Facilitating community engagement with ecological issues.

Going forwards, I identify my research coming closest to Gilmurray’s final category.  However, rather than ‘engaging’ the public in local environmental issues, my broad intention is to listen to/with different communities’ relationship to these issues, referencing concepts of Environmental Justice (Sze, 2018) and Just Transition (defined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as "A set of principles, processes and practices that aim to ensure that no people, workers, places, sectors, countries or regions are left behind in the transition from a high-carbon to a low carbon economy." (2022)).

Based within Teesside's socio-ecology, and its context of intense industrial development/'transition' alongside environmental degradation/reparation, my doctoral project aims to enrich 'ecological sound art' by paying critical attention to the ways that listening/sounding and participatory arts intersect with social and environmental justice.  So its aim is not necessarily to seek to change peoples’ attitudes, but for the co-creative process involving ecological listening and sounding to generate collective action which pertains to a range of eco-social concerns in Teesside.

‘Gongs of Teesside’ aims to be both an intervention within - and a metaphor for - social, industrial and ecological change in Teesside.  It will involve skilled metal-workers to make the gongs; community engagement in ‘soundings’ with the gongs; community action in deciding what these events could look like; and the potential to forge new connections across communities, aiming to create new resources whether through collective actions, new networks, practices or even policy engagements.

At a time of ‘transition’ in this historically deprived area, the process will aim to amplify feelings of hope or anger, loss or celebration, (Herrmann, 2017), and privilege the lived experience of the participants through practicing new “intensities of listening” and sounding (LaBelle, 2018). 

In order to begin to explore how these social contexts intersect with my ecological sound art practice, I will also undertake field trips to some of the places discussed in the recent dialogues and use durational improvised performances with the prototype steel gong as a means of enquiry/’thinking’ through artistic practice.  I will document how the physical process of taking the gong to a particular place and sounding it generates new understanding of its potential meanings, properties and uses.  How does this influence the future aims of the project?  Does this process develop my understanding of local peoples’ sense of place?  Does active listening to the ecology of this place in the present add new perspectives to this idea of place? 

I am also considering how the material processes implicated in the project are also ‘transitions’: the formation of the iron ore, its eventual extraction from the earth and its processing to make steel, and the shaping of the steel through hammering, heating and pressing. 

Whilst the ‘ritualised’ in my practice is not addressed here, it remains very much part of my plan for this project and is a subject I have begun exploring through some other writing this year. Below, I have begun exploring the rationale for a co-creative research method. Additional qualitative research methodologies I will consider going forwards include: Sonic Journalism (Cusack, 2016), Sonic (or Sound) Ethnography (Eg Ferrarini and Scaldaferri, 2020; and Feld and Brenneis, 2004); and Sensory Ethnography (Pink, 2015). 

The case for Participatory/Co-Creative Research

A participatory method of research for this project is intrinsic to its aims. I have begun exploring Action Research, Participatory Action Research and Co-Creative Research, as I begin refining plans for Gongs of Teesside.  Each have their proponents and I will explore their differences and alignments more exhaustively over the coming months. Below, I outline some characteristics of these methodologies, and initial considerations around co-creative research in reference to Gongs of Teesside.

As Kindon et al propose, these approaches collectively take the stance that knowledge and understanding exists in, and can be generated through, a range of contexts and perspectives, rather than residing in academia.  Explicitly counter-hegemonic, Participatory Action Research “recognises a plurality of knowledges in a variety of institutions and locations” (Kindon et al, 2007 p.9).  It is also characterised by a leaning towards the knowledges of those in society who are most systematically excluded, with the view that these groups can reveal important and under-represented knowledge of the structures and processes of unjust social arrangements. 

There are ethical and philosophical alignments of such methods with ecological ways of thinking and being.  Ecological thinking (Morton, 2008) and co-creative research methods both identify the interconnectedness of all elements within a system; value diversity (of beings and of perspectives/modes of perception); and recognise the interdependence of collaboration and sustainability.  These also feel consistent with sustainable methods for addressing the climate and ecological crisis, moving away from ‘business as usual’ to environmentally sustainable (non-extractive, relational, caring, generative) ways of working.  In essence, ethical and philosophical commonalities between ecological thought, ecological sound art, and co-creative research lie in their shared commitment to holistic, participatory, and systemic approaches to understanding and addressing complex challenges facing both human societies and the natural world.

Notes and selected reflections from accessing “Creatures Framework”, a multi-authored online resource:

https://creaturesframework.org/about.html

A co-creative research project requires an ongoing, reflexive evaluation of the equitable distribution of social capital engendered through the process, underpinned by a critically rigorous assessment of its benefits to participants. The lead co-creative researcher must consider questions throughout the research process, acknowledging its inherently contingent, surprising, and often unstable nature. Considerable resources are needed to scope, establish, and sustain ethical and equitable relationships, necessitating continual reality checks vis-à-vis the project's ideals and an ongoing balancing act between values and pragmatism.

Like Participatory Action Research, Co-Creative Research underscores the role of methodology in supporting or catalyzing social change.  In its ideal form, co-creation effectively involves participants collaborating in imagining desired future worlds, implying the possibility of transforming themselves.  It stimulates open-mindedness and creativity.  It generates a shared platform through which to collectively explore differing perspectives, meanings and experiences, sensitising participants to the implications of these differences.  Often including underrepresented groups, co-creative practices enable co-operation between diverse groups, and the possibility to examine and disrupt normalized differences in power, interests and knowledge.  These dimensions of co-creation lead to knowledge creation, insight and diverse possible outcomes.

By inviting and creating space for communication, co-creation offers the space to establish a shared language through which collaboration can take place.  This can lead to a strengthened sense of interconnectedness and empathy between participants.  Entering into such a process gives participants a sense of collective agency.

The groups I am considering working with on Gongs of Teesside (GoT) include the blacksmiths making the gongs; ex-steel workers from diverse backgrounds and ethnicities; a ‘Women of Steel’ group; a youth environmental action group; young adults in Further Education training in steel, engineering, and sustainable energy; local youth clubs; and a local food growers’ network.  As such, diverse and inter-generational perspectives will be represented, as will different knowledges and expertise. 

My assumption at this point is that participation and co-creative status hinge on participants finding relevance in the Gongs, such as their provenance, sound, and perceived meaning or effectiveness.  Will the quality of the sound of the gongs generate interest and engagement?  Might they offer the potential, as Brandon LaBelle suggests, to “…reinsert forms of sensuality to worldly relations; that seek to construct structures of togetherness and plurality, retaking the processes and procedures of assembly” (LaBelle, 2018 p.24)?

The nature of the collaborations between groups, the roles of the co-creators/participants, and required time commitment will be contingent on funding, initial scoping conversations and ongoing co-design, evaluation and feedback.  The form and purpose of each ’sonic action’ will be determined through the co-creative process.  It may depend on whether participants seek to ‘amplify’ local issues or concerns; to celebrate some aspect of their local community and heritage; to mourn the loss of the industrial past; or of the local ecology.  Perhaps these different events will reveal and explore the depth, complexity and range of locally specific eco-social issues?  But perhaps different meanings and motivations will surface through the collaborative process? I am interested in the role of the sonic in this process: how it might mediate, clarify, hold or diffuse different perspectives, meanings and values.   How do the different actors listen, what do they hear and what do the sounds mean to them?

As initiator of this intervention and process, my role in choosing collaborators, gaining their interest, engendering open-mindedness, and understanding how to sustain it will need to be critically considered.  A critical approach to co-creation perhaps needs to hold open the possibility of reverting to a different mode of creation in order to maintain an ethically sound position.

Co-Creative Research: Building a Framework

Nicholas et al (2019) offer some helpful framing of the boundaries and features of co-creative research.  Below are brief summaries of their considerations of power relationships and expertise along with some initial reflections.

Power relationships.  This considers the relationships between, for example, the implementer(s), the intended beneficiaries, and the ‘professional’ researcher(s).  Who sets the aims of the research and who gets to change the purpose, direction, parameters and qualities of the research process?

Who is included within the research process?  And how do these choices either reinforce or disrupt existing marginalisation and power configurations in a system?  Transparency regarding power differentials is essential, even as the lead researcher acknowledges inherent challenges in achieving “full” co-creativity: Unequal power relationships are the cause of social injustice and implicated in the call for Just Transition and Environmental Justice – This is a subject investigated through this research but is also unavoidably embedded in its method.

The intention may be to be as “co-creative” as possible, but I suppose its ideals impossible to achieve.  I have conceived and am initiating the project and will have control of any funding for it. Transparency and the accessible articulation of the ways in which unequal power relationships are present in the project is therefore key.  This brings to mind critical perspectives on ‘socially engaged’ and ‘participatory’ arts practices such as Grant H. Kester and Claire Bishop.  Bishop (2012) exposes the dangers of instrumentalizing social issues for artistic purposes, or inadvertently reproducing existing power dynamics and inequalities, highlighting the need for greater accountability and transparency.  Kester (2004) additionally warns against depoliticizing systemic issues through aestheticizing them and questions the ability of socially engaged projects to bring about lasting social change.

One challenge I anticipate based on initial dialogues with potential co-creators, is that others may not see/experience as significant the power inequalities that I as ‘lead researcher’ (and holder of power) do.  Finding a shared language for, and understanding of, the power relationships in the project is essential, but ‘buy in’ to an agreed means towards this is needed - lengthy discussion could be perceived as unnecessary or irrelevant. This is one area where a well thought-through plan for ethical research can support this process. For example, a well designed information sheet can communicate key points succinctly but also offer a framework for discussion.

Should there be perceived or real differences in power between different co-creative groups or individuals (eg more and less privileged young adults), how are these mitigated and what is my responsibility and role from an ethical and research perspective?

Expertise.  Another consideration in co-creative research is how ‘expertise’ is understood and valued and by whom.  As a project evolves, is there a need for additional ‘outside’ expertise and how might they be involved so as to avoid marginalised forms of knowledge and practice being overlooked, misinterpreted or misused?

Recognising the differing values placed upon various forms of knowledge and practice will be a determining factor in how a ‘professional’ researcher might build engagement, synergy, and trust with co-creators.  New paradigms may seem threatening or disturbing to potential collaborators.  They may lack credibility in their eyes.  What are the ways through which the professional researcher might consider these different values and associated practicalities and what qualities are required to navigate this?

One example of this is my positionality as a middle-class, educated, newly-arrived ‘outsider’ to the area who has relatively little knowledge of the steel industry, its heritage and communities.  In initial scoping conversations, I have made a point of ‘not knowing’ and of respecting the personally and locally held knowledges of participants.  Respect is communicated in part through how I listen.

Peat Oberon as a blacksmith, metal-worker, and educator, has immense knowledge of the local area, its geography and geology, industrial heritage, and related social networks.  He is also knowledgeable about the chemical, physical and engineering processes required for the sourcing of iron ore, and the production and working of steel.  He has embodied knowledge of the materials he works with, including the workshop, tools and processes he has largely designed and built himself.  We have some shared understandings of the creative process, the reflexivity and adaptability required when working with physical materials.  He is interested in my knowledge of music and sound, but perhaps less interested in my purpose and motivation for making the gongs. (I would hazard that he has little to no interest in me as a researcher.)  I realise that these assumptions/beliefs have mediated my interactions with him as we have worked on the gong design and fabrication, finding shared focus on the quality of the sound of the gong.  I have been consciously aware of building rapport and trust.  The prototype gongs we have made are, for me, infused with meanings generated through conversation, working and eating together.

The considerations of the sociological framework for co-creative research seem at first to run counter to the emergent, serendipitous or generative qualities of my ecological sound art practice in the landscape.  How might my practices of ecological listening and thinking be limited through this project?  When might I (as ‘Ecological Artist’) have to curtail or compromise this practice when working in its social contexts and serving a more explicitly activist purpose?  On the other hand, to what degree do the qualities and methods of my ecological sound practices facilitate co-creation with other humans?  Does ecological or engaged listening and sounding offer an effective method of eliciting social change?