Last weekend I ran the first 'anarcheology' workshop with ladies from SHE community choir. We went to Lordenshaw in Northumberland National Park where there is the largest collection of prehistoric rock art in the UK.
Last weekend I ran the first 'anarcheology' workshop with ladies from SHE community choir. We went to Lordenshaw in Northumberland National Park where there is the largest collection of prehistoric rock art in the UK.
These collaborative workshops use song, storytelling, mythmaking, movement and improvisation to empower voices and bodies which have been historically marginalized. Recent studies show that singing together can synchronize your heartbeats and breathing patterns, promoting collective awareness, group cohesion and general wellbeing.
The aims of these workshops are to forge new paths that relinquish the damaging dogma of a hegemonically and patriarchally managed past, in order to open up alternative and marginal narratives which are not confined by disciplinary structures or epistemic conventions.
We started the day warming up ourselves and the site with responsive exercises in movement and voice. We then worked towards combining these as a group, building up a soundscape in response to the architecture of the space, the ancient stone carvings and surrounding landscape.
Once everybody felt comfortable with the space and others in the group, we worked on an improvised sound piece in response to a large prehistoric carved channel. Passing sound up and down the channel as a group, we collectively flowed through states of laughter, harmony and wailing that stirred something in everyone present, it was a really powerful and immersive experience.
After lunch we did a myth-making exercise where the women were asked to write a short story about the rock art, we then had a group storytelling session where we all shared our myths. We then wrote down the words and phrases that resonated with us most as a group, and built some harmonies around these, finishing with a performance of this.
Many of the women had never done anything like this before, and one participant in her late 60s remarked that at her age she didn’t expect to be given the opportunity to try something this experimental- she found it really empowering. Due to the positive and encouraging feedback, i’m now organising a second workshop at Roughting Linn in a couple of weeks time. I’ve been filming and recording sound from the session, and this will from part of an ongoing film work.
Images:
Singing on ‘Channel Rock’: Production still from a film work in progress that documents the participants during an improvisation workshop at the prehistoric rock art site at Lordenshaw, June 2017
Altar Stone: 3D Scan of Lordenshaw Prehistoric Rock Art site evidencing cup & ring marks and carved channel.
Myth-making on the ‘Lip Stone’: Production still from a film work in progress that documents the participants during an improvisation workshop at the prehistoric rock art site at Lordenshaw, June 2017.
