My project for Brent 2020 London Borough of Culture in collaboration with the wonderful Kensal Rise Library went live in September. Kensal Rise Has A Story tells the story the streets around Kensal Rise Library through the voices of local people and is part of the inaugral Brent Biennal.
I explained the project in an interview with Art Review
“It’s a geographic sound map or trail of Kensal Rise. The form the project takes has partly been informed by the COVID-19 restrictions. I had planned this beautiful archive inside the library and some of the sound works were going to be burnt onto vinyl which could be listened to within a listening booth. We’ve not got those, but its ok, those were outcomes, they weren’t really the work itself which is a portrait of the community in their own words. By ‘community’ I mean the community of the library. Where it becomes geographic is that the emphasis is on the subjective responses to the environment and the changes within that environment rather than looking for some objective, dry, historical overview of the area, or even contemporary commentary on the area.
The ethos of the Kensal Rise Library is at the heart of the project. About 60 percent of the contributors are connected to the library, as users or in some other way. You can’t listen to any of the clips without feeling the presence of the library.”
You can read the rest of the interview here
photo by Thierry Bal
You can explore the trail by following the map found outside Kensal Rise Library and scanning the QR Codes with the camera on a smart phone (or listening to the playlist above).
photo by Thierry Bal
photo by Thierry Bal
YouTuber, Sean James Cameron made this great video of a walk around the trail
Longer form versions of the interviews and additional research materials will be added to the project blog here.
Map at Kensal Rise Library
You can watch a Zoom talk I gave about the project for Kensal Rise Library here
What a great project, John! I was really excited to read of your work at Kensal Rise Library. Congratulations. Before I retired I was the Local Studies Librarian at the local library service in the Blue Mountains (NSW, Australia) for many years. In the early 1980s I coordinated an oral history project – all analog then, of course, but we did end up with a wonderful collection of tapes which my successor is now digitizing. I think I’ll send him a link to your blog so he can read of your work. You might be interested to know that perhaps my favourite outcome of our oral history project was a series of song-writing workshops using the oral history material and organized by a musician in residence at the time. Some great songs were created and a cassette tape produced which proved popular. Anyway, thanks for telling us about your work at Kensal Rise. Public libraries are great institutions and so important to community. But, then I am a little biased. 🙂
Thanks for that John – I love the Blue Mountains. What a wonderful outcome with the songs
John Low sent me the link and what a fantastic project this is, it also provides my new word, phrase actually, for the day – ‘psychogeographic sound trail’, wow, just add it to my dictionary, that’s better. The Soundcloud software makes a good job of it too. Our Oral Histories are all in the catalogue but your wonderful work takes it to a new level – great stuff!
Best Wishes, John Merriman
See if this link works – https://bmcc.ent.sirsidynix.net.au/client/en_AU/default/search/results?qu=oral+history&qf=RESOURCE_TYPE%09Digital+Type%09Oral+history%09Oral+history
Many thanks John
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