Sound Explorers: Dan Fox and Leven Valley Primary School

School/Setting

Leven Valley Primary School, near Ulverston

Artist

Dan Fox

Aims

The project aimed to

• Engage with a school that had not previously had an artist in residence.
• Extend the artist's use of sound recording with a group of young people, including online maps with embedded, geo-tagged sounds and images
• Develop new models for cross-curricular work incorporating literacy, music and ICT.

Process

The inspiration for the project was the local environment, and took place nearly two years after severe floods in 2009 which has swept away the old bridge and a new footbridge had recently been installed. 

Dan worked with 15 year 3 pupils over several sessions to capture sounds and recordings in the environment and their classroom. While on location, children wore wireless headphones which enabled them to listen to sounds effectively and also allowed Dan to communicate with them in a noisy settings like the weir. Pupils wrote pieces about the River Leven while listening to the recordings of the river they had made and placed them onto the Google satellite map using the classroom's smartboard. Listen to one of the recordings below.

Impact

For Dan the project sparked many more ideas that he would like to develop, having explored how interactive maps can be an effective platform for combining many skills in a creative way. The children were engaged in their learning which incorporated literacy, ICT, drawing and music and were well supported by staff at the school.

Next Steps

Informed by feedback from the school, Dan hopes to develop a package to be able to promote Sound Explorers to other schools.

Find out more

View the interactive online map here or email Dan Fox

Attachments