Creative project to sound off with Tynemouth Castle Inn support

Youngsters from across North Tyneside will be creating a brand new sound walk for the area this summer, as support from The Inn Collection Group enables Hand Of to again run their popular summer holiday activity for incoming Year 7 students from across the borough.

Set to reopen Tynemouth’s Park Hotel this autumn as The Tynemouth Castle Inn early this autumn, the Newcastle-based pub with rooms operator responded to organisers Hand Of’s request for support to ensure this year’s project remained fully-funded.

The North Tyneside Sound Walk is a student-led interactive guide to the North Tyneside coast, drawing attention to the sights and sounds of different locations around the place that they call home.

Showcasing the smallest, biggest, loudest and quietest parts of the students’ community, through art and music, The North Tyneside Sound Walk is a transition project, working with incoming Y7 students over an intensive two-week period in the summer holidays.

A sound walk, or walking piece, is any walk that focuses on listening to the environment, with or without the use of technology, or adds to the experience through the use of sound or voice. This can include a scripted or choreographed score or work that has additional audio elements.

Working together with around 10 artists, musicians, producers, and archivists to uncover stories from the history of North Tyneside, these stories then inspire the students develop a sound walk made up of two chapters.

Their work includes researching and making field recordings; devising, writing and editing scripts; composing and performing music for the soundtrack to their walk; creating Foley; mixing and editing their recordings using sound editing software; and designing and creating visual art

They also work together to produce a visual art exhibition to accompany the launch of their sound walk, with this year’s project getting underway from Monday August 14.

The resultant content able to be streamed on Spotify, downloaded free from Bandcamp, or bought on CD from the Hand Of web shop.

With The Tynemouth Castle Inn occupying a prominent place in the heritage of the town, The Inn Collection Group communications executive Andrew Robson said supporting this year’s project represented an excellent opportunity to help celebrate that and that of the wider area.

He said: “We’re delighted to be supporting Hand’ Of’s sound walk project this summer and allowing the participants to really connect with the place that they call home.

“The North Tyneside coast has many stories to tell and we’re looking forward to experiencing what the students create as part of the project.

“With The Tynemouth Castle Inn reopening later this year, we hope that guests staying with us will download the soundwalk and enjoy the students work as part of their break with us.”

An arts education charity, Hand Of is dedicated to enriching the education of disadvantaged children and young people by giving them unique, creative opportunities to work alongside professional artists, musicians, archivists, academies and more.

Creating immersive projects that connect children with their local area, Hand Of’s projects harness the arts, heritage and education sectors to create a cultural education, allowing children and young people to create artistic responses to their experiences and understanding of where they call home.

Project coordinator Mille Avis said: “Our projects embed learning in real places and spaces, bringing children to buildings or locations of historical significance, close to where they live and through learning about the past we encourage children to think about their present and future too,

“Working alongside professional musicians, artists and theatre-makers, they create artistic responses to their experiences from the project. Sometimes this comes in the form of live performance and sometimes their work forms sound walks in their local area.

“We believe every child should be given the chance to develop and grow into the smart young person that they can be – full of ideas, able and keen to rise to challenges.

“In doing so, we work together with schools to identify children who can benefit most from our work, which focusses on boosting confidence and self-esteem, nurturing curiosity and inquisitiveness, and growing cultural and social capital.

“We believe that learning is a chance to explore, discover and shape the world around us, and we are grateful to the support of The Inn Collection Group in helping us to remain committed to empowering children who need support on their educational journeys.”