Walking Salt’s Waters

High time I updated this blog. There’s been lots happening behind the scenes, as a new phase of the Multi-Story Water project slowly swings into gear. In the last month or so there’s been planning meetings with those excellent people at Shipley’s Kirkgate Centre, plus the appointment of a wonderful research associate in Lyze Dudley (of whom, more another time), and lots more besides — all irons in the fire for what’s going to become a 3-year project working directly with various local groups and individuals to develop discussions and creative projects around the future social and environmental potential of Shipley’s waterways (please do get in touch if you’d like to know more). In the shorter term, though, there are also plans afoot for a contribution to this year’s Saltaire Festival, in September…

2014-06-17 13.03.38Here’s the ‘bard of Saltaire’, Eddie Lawler, snapped last week up at Hirst Weir (which has yet another tree straddling it…). Eddie and I will be presenting a one-off gig on September 18th at Half Moon Cafe in Roberts Park — Eddie playing his guitar and singing, me doing a little spoken word… It’s a double act we first developed on the Blue Route of our performance tours in 2012-13 (see ‘Performances’ tab), and which we both enjoy. The Half Moon event will really just be a public launch, though, for a longer-lasting but less visible performance — which you’ll be able to experience in the form of a downloadable audio guide. This will take listeners on a walking tour from the bottom of Victoria Road, in the heart of Saltaire, and north-west to what remains of Milner Field, the grand mansion built in the 1870s by Titus Salt Jr., and now just a pile of stone overtaken by self-seeded woodland…

2014-06-17 10.44.22The audio guide, titled Salt’s Waters (Eddie’s suggestion), will connect mill and ruin via various local waterways. There’s the River Aire and Leeds-Liverpool Canal, most obviously, but also Loadpit Beck (which flows into the Aire near Bradford Rowing Club, and which marks the boundary line between Baildon and Bingley land). There’s also the even lesser-known Little Beck, which passes through the Milner Field estate and was once dammed to create a boating lake for Titus Jr. and his family and guests (who included royalty, no less!). Little Beck is the chosen subject for the new song Eddie has written to be mixed into the audio guide, and which will thus have its world premiere at Half Moon Cafe. It joins other watery songs in the Lawler canon, including those dedicated to the Bradford Canal (written for Blue Route), and of course Bradford Beck — an older song which is now the unofficial theme tune of the Friends of Bradford’s Becks, and also features (thanks Eddie!) on my short film Wading to Shipley. That film, incidentally, was expertly edited by Lee Dalley, of Leeds University’s Workshop Theatre, who is pictured above with Eddie last week… (they had just met for the first time!)

2014-06-17 11.20.17Lee has generously undertaken to sound-design our audio guide — mixing my words and Eddie’s music with layered sounds of his own… So he came out to walk the route with us and record sound samples along the way. Here he is with his recorder (and Eddie) underneath the Barden aqueduct — which crosses the Aire at one end of the Higher Coach Road estate. Lee wanted to catch the echoing sound of the river’s flow, as heard just here… He also will have captured the electronic click of my phone-camera taking this shot, but when I apologised he said he loves that kind of random sound interference. Who knows, maybe the ‘pling’ will find its way into the final audio mix!

It was a thoroughly enjoyable experience, walking with Eddie and Lee up to Milner Field — so enjoyable in fact that I forgot to take any more pictures en route, and just revelled in the company and the ambient sounds of flowing water, rushing water, gurgling water, wind in the trees, multiple forms of bird-song, footsteps going over wooden stiles, bike wheels on the towpath… you name it. You notice all this so much more acutely when someone keeps shutting you up to record them! (or at least, I do…) I just hope my narrative can do some kind of justice to the sounds that walkers will be hearing both around about them and in the mix…

There is one other picture I just want to share here though… It was taken just before the previous one, as we walked through the grassy flood plain area that separates the Higher Coach Road estate from the river. I was fascinated to notice that, this year, the council’s mowers have largely refrained from cutting the grass back — except along the riverside path that is traditionally beaten out only by walkers’ footsteps. You can see that mown bit to the left of the picture here… and in the centre and right, the long meadow grasses that have grown up unhindered…

2014-06-17 11.12.23I need to find out whose idea it was to leave the grass uncut… and also what the residents make of it! One of the findings of our previous research work on the estate (expressed in our Green Route performances, that came through it) is that many of the residents have felt that the mown grass field was both: (a) a bit daft – since the council’s mowers would come and chew up the grass even in wet weather – when parts of this flood plain area just become a big squelchy puddle!; and (b) a wasted opportunity – since some other, more imaginative arrangement, like a reeded wetland area, might attract more diverse wildlife and thus also be more interesting for residents and visitors… Interestingly, this new wildflower meadow option seems to be a sort of cautious step in that direction… although it might also be purely a result of council budget cuts making mowing less frequent! I must investigate… (… he dons a deerstalker and strides off into the long grass…)