There are many great projects out there right now which are introducing young people to our tradtions. Stations of the Sun is one such project. It’s a new multi-media educational project planned for the summer term that will culminate in 12 public performances this autumn. The project involves Luke Daniels and John Dipper, pupils from Brimpton and Beenham primary schools, West Berkshire Council and Reading’s Museum of English Rural Life.
Young people and communities in West Berkshire will co-produce new music exploring a forgotten cycle of local traditional festivals and rituals. Through a combination of live music, recorded sound, images and spoken word the award-winning duo John Dipper and Luke Daniels present their unique take on strange rural customs and the hidden history of our ritual year. Ingenious assimilation of shared musical sources into arresting new folk music will provide audiences with a concurrent view of local culture spanning half a millennium of recorded local history.
A potent blend of English folk, new music and a lively show exploring our forgotten traditional calendar and annual festivals.
We want to work with two rural communities and the local music services in West Berkshire to develop their particular strengths in the arts and culture by co-producing, with local young people, a series of short musical works that will explore their forgotten cycle of local traditional festivals. Recorded interviews with older people from their communities, and their own research will help create a photographic and audio archive of local tunes and songs as source material that will inspire our new work.
You can join them for an enjoyable evening in which they update their festive cycle’s original soundtrack, plotting the stations of the sun to discover a wealth of music that will stimulate the appetites of all ages for English traditional culture.