Forging the gongs

Once one of the most prosperous industrial heartlands in the world, Teesside has experienced decades of deindustrialisation and is now home to some significant new investments. Professor Sarah Irwin is working with sound artist Nell Catchpole on a programme of research which asks: how do local citizens think about, experience and relate to local environments, industry and social change? How does this vary across generations? 

Photo credit: Sarah Irwin, reproduced with permission.

The Sapling Fund has been supporting the early phases of this project, initially by testing an innovative co-creation method. The project team has partnered with blacksmiths to make gongs, from locally sourced steel, at a local forge. Through a collaboration with the Young Producers group at Tees Valley Museums, the project has involved local young adults in the gong making activity. These young adults have developed their creative skills in documenting the gong making, using audio/visual techniques as well as engaging in group workshops and interviewing the blacksmiths. They co-curated an engagement activity with the public in a museum park, sounding the gongs and talking to visitors about local places of interest. 

Photo credit: Sarah Irwin, reproduced with permission.

The project team has also engaged with students from a Further Education college who have visited the forge, learned about blacksmithing and supported metal design work for gong stands which will be used in later gong sounding events. The designs are inspired by local industrial motifs. 

“It has been a joy to work with my collaborator Nell in running a project which is so closely linked to, and builds on, our participants’ skills, interests and creativity”, Sarah explains. 

Having secured further support from Historic England, the team are partnering with other local organisations and planning a series of gong soundings across Redcar and Cleveland. The project will bring together local citizens in places they identify as holding meaning and importance. A wider group of young adults will develop their creative skills by documenting these events and supporting a planned exhibition. The gong soundings and community gatherings will support the project aims of gathering cross-generational stories of places and the memories and meanings which they evoke, and enhancing our understanding of the hopes, expectations and concerns of local people about the future.

Photo credit: Rachel Deakin, reproduced with permission.