Dalston songs, recycling
Victoria Ward, Wednesday, January 13, 2010

This is, I confess, a very selfish blog at least in the first part. A couple of years back I was lucky enough to see Helen Chadwick’s Dalston Songs and blogged about it

My neighbour (who would like me to point out that if anyone would like us to include a professional accordionist in our Sparknow offer, she’s ready and willing), is a friend of Helen’s and recently let me know that it’s coming round again at the Royal Opera House in early February.

I decided to wait until I’d bought my own slug of tickets before posting this blog. Yup, I really did.

I exhort, urge, beg you to get to this show. This is what I said about it in the email I sent gathering in ticket numbers:

This is the most gorgeous mix of song and oral history. I’ve seen it once a couple of years back, and thought at the time (as I blogged) that every government and United Nations conference on immigration and refugees should commission Helen to perform this as a central part of the conference. It would change the conversations.

This holds even more meaning for me now that we’ve spent a year working with a client on narrative practice and made with them, among other things, a CD of song, stories and sounds that seeks to convey the distinctive qualities of the organisation and its mission. One former Sparknow associate, invited to comment on it, said that what she noticed was

• The calmness it instills
• How you feel like you are taking many journeys with them: across the world (the organisation’s broad reach) with the types of music accompaniments, accents and voices; across time with the historical anecdotes; across generations: both the storytellers and the accompaniments; across eons: from modernity to ancient
• How actually the content seems minimized – makes me wonder how many hours of recordings you had to distil down ; that maybe there are 15 key anecdotes used and it feels so vivid
• How the clients are so present in the stories
• How well it communicates the impact and vision of the orgnisation – what a beautiful onboarding tool it could be as well as many other purposes it could fit
• Made me miss Spark terribly

This delighted me most especially because this is someone who knows Sparknow’s work and was instrumental in bringing us into being, but who is tough and demanding and clear sighted, and has absolutely nothing to do with the client or piece of work, so it seems that the voice we’ve made in partnership with the client carries a long way. I do hope so.

Next stop a double bill with Helen Chadwick and David Gunn, who worked with us on the CD and was inspiring, delicately subtle and properly demanding. I don’t know what it could be, but a composition through which the organisation recomposes itself, now there’s an ambition to cherish.