Summat for the Bairns

Fun, FREE, creative and playful drop-in workshops for the whole family!

Sat 29th, Sun 29th & Sat 5th 10am - 3pm

Navigator North, Unit 7, Hillstreet Shopping Centre (Opposite

Primark) Middlesbrough, TS1 1SU

When was the last time you stopped to listen? What does Middlesbrough sound like today? What might we hear in the future?

You’ll find workshop stations where kids of all ages can get creative exploring what the future might sound like! We’ll use mics and amps to make our own future sounds, and we’ll imagine, design and make our own futuristic instruments...what will you create? Suitable for all ages.

The building of the boxes took place between my home studio in Gateshead and the Auxiliary in Middlesbrough. I put together a couple of prototype boxes, experimenting with the kinds of objects you could use, the noises they would make, and the different ways the sounds could be amplified. There was always a hope the devices could be portable, so this was factored into the scale & size of the final devices. But as much as anything, I was working to the available dimensions of the raw materials I had - the lid of each box comes from the back of an antique Welsh Dresser I'd salvaged these lovely pine boards from - and so I worked intuitively from there. I wanted for each of the final boxes to have their own vibe or sonic focus, but to also work as part of a larger ecosystem, so used some of the same elements in different ways across the instruments.