By Anan Tello
A telephone message conveys not only our words, but also our desires and our dreams. When we record and send a voice note to a loved one, we imagine that our whispers light up the recipient’s face. In this project, it is our hope that whispers from around the world will illuminate new ways of sharing stories.
Led by poet Dr Sarah Jackson from Nottingham Trent University, in collaboration with Leah Gayer from refugee arts charity Compass Collective and sound artist Hardi Kurda, the Voice Notes project launched in October 2023 with a series of workshops at Arbat Refugee Camp near Slemani in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Arbat is home to over four thousand Kurdish children and young people who have fled civil war in their home country of Syria. The Voice Notes team worked in partnership with the charity STEP to provide creative activities for thirty three young people aged fourteen to twenty five years.
The aim of our project is to provide a safe space in which participants can cultivate new modes of creative self-expression through writing, listening and performing. Activities at Arbat included drama games led by Leah, writing workshops led by Sarah and listening sessions exploring sound technologies led by Hardi. During the week-long programme, the young people gained digital skills by developing and recording content for an installation of voice notes that will be exhibited in the UK and in Kurdistan. Participants were invited to share their stories through a telephone message left for a loved one, and took part in capturing and composing the sounds and voices of Arbat. In the garden of STEP, for example, the young people used a geophone to record the sound of water being drawn from the earth through the roots of a tree; in response, one young person remarked, ‘Today I learned that even the trees have a voice’.
Providing a safe and supportive space in which to nurture these voices, we are committed to an ethos of creative co-production, whereby all participants actively contribute to designing and shaping the outputs, which include an interactive audio exhibition and a mobile app. All the young people involved in the project are credited as artists and writers, and will be invited to celebrate the exhibition launch with their friends and families when we return to Slemani in the Spring.
But before then, our next stop is Nottingham, where we will be joined by a group of young artists from refugee backgrounds for workshops in November and December at New Art Exchange and Attenborough Nature Reserve.
Voice Notes is led by Sarah Jackson from Nottingham Trent University in collaboration with Compass Collective and Hardi Kurda, and is supported by Counterpoints Arts, New Art Exchange, Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature, Refugee Roots, Slemani UNESCO City of Literature and STEP. The project is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. To find out more about the project or to get involved, please visit our website or contact sarah.jackson02@ntu.ac.uk.
