Dingy Butterflies supported the development of ‘Echoes of Bensham’, a participatory research project exploring memories and stories associated with local places in Bensham, responses to current conditions, and imagining its future. The four month project, created by Tom Hewitt as part of his Masters of Architecture at Northumbria University, engaged local residents, workers and community groups via four ‘mapping’ sessions; two sedentary interviews; an ‘interactive map’; seven ‘walking tours’; and a ‘Dice Walk’, co-led with psychocartographer and artist Jessica Dolby. From these responses a locative media artwork, a ‘soundmap’, was created via the Echoes.xyz app. This soundmap collated the stories, memories and reactions that local residents and users of Bensham associate with local places past, present and future. Audio clips in digital space, overlaid onto physical places, enable both locals and visitors to create their own narratives and audio-tours of everyday life in Bensham. The soundmap aims to reach beyond the immediately visible and present, to read and understand the past and inform re-imaginings of the future.
To download the Echoes app and listen to the soundscape click ‘Echoes of Bensham’
Tom Hewitt
8 February 2017
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