We’re delighted to report that the first stage of our Walking In Others Footsteps project has now gone live!
Dan Fox’s Voices From The Hood can now be heard at The Forum in Barrow until April 26.
Dan is a sound artist who we commissioned to help bring the Elizabeth Roberts Working Class Oral History Archive to life and he found a hair-raising way of doing it!
He has created a Sixties style hair salon where the hood hairdryers have been converted in to listening posts and a vintage hairdryer becomes a personal speaker.
Visitors are invited to take a comfy seat and via a small control panel they can play excerpts from the archive which is held at the Regional Heritage Centre at Lancaster University.
The pioneering work by Elizabeth, who lives in Lancaster and was born in Barrow, captured the voices and memories of people in Barrow, Lancaster and Preston from 1890 up until 1970.
Dan is one of several artists brought together by Mirador to take part in Walking In Others Footsteps – a celebration of the work to digitise the archive and make it available through a dedicated website hosted by the Regional Heritage Centre at Lancaster University.
While ‘under the dryers’ visitors can read a magazine which lists details of the tracks they can hear.
“The piece should work on two levels: the personal experience of sitting and listening whilst watching the world go by and the image of a period hair salon popping up in an unexpected place,” said Dan who is based in Ulverston.
He learned his trade growing up on the road with Welfare State International. For more than 25 years he has worked all over the world with theatre companies, bands, festivals and organisations.
After its stint at The Forum, Voices From The Hood moves on to Barrow Library from April 27-May 11;The Dukes in Lancaster from May 14-20; and The Harris Museum in Preston from May 21-July 16.
