The Workforce Symphony

Working in collaboration with g8 artists to respond to the theme of Leicester’s industry, both past and present. The new commissioned artworks have been made in response to collections of historic objects and museum artefacts as part of a group exhibition in the new galleries, at Attenborough Arts Centre, 9 June – 20 August 2017. The new soundscape The Workforce Symphony has been produced using a mixture of field recordings, interviews and oral history archives to produce a narrative that explores the rhythmic sounds created by industrial machinery, the patterns of voices recounting stories and the natural environment. The composition is layered with sound recordings gathered from factories, workshops, vintage industrial machinery, parks, wildlife and interviews with retired industrialists and manipulated to mimic the sounds of industry or stretched, repeated and reversed to produce new and unexpected audio samples. The exhibition is supported by Attenborough Arts Centre, Leicester and Leicestershire & Museum Services, Arts Council England, Heritage Lottery Fund and Leicester City Council. With thanks to Abbey Pumping Station, Leicestershire Industrial History Society, Men in Sheds at Age UK Leicestershire and Rutland, Cooke Optics Limited, Abbey Park and the East Midlands Oral History Archive, University of Leicester.