Ten Acres of Sound is a festival of noise, sound, sonic art, music, performance, whatever located within Stirchley, Birmingham. Artists were invited to make site responsive works to be exhibited throughout the area and performers asked to bring their work from all over into Stirchley as a series of gigs or street events.
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It was initially intended to go ahead in April 2020 but had to be postponed due to the Coronavirus pandemic. Adapting to new conditions, it now takes the form of online, outdoor and postal events, with installations still in some venues in Stirchley.
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While much of Stirchley is still closed and under partial lock-down the festival still consists of 6 site responsive works, ranging from soundwalks to megaphone installations; 9 online performances from Birmingham artists and beyond; 5 workshops, where residents of Stirchley or further afield can take part in group sound-making, try out different recording techniques or make their own instruments. Along-side this we have a radio hour to showcase the rich outputs of all the artists and musicians involve and featuring interviews with them all and a special edition of our local quiz based entirely on noise.
Ten Acres of Sound was devised by Artefact Projects, a co-operative artspace on the high street of Stirchley, and aimed at aligning concerns around gentrification, locality, climate justice and social relations. The work actually presented in this new re-worked festival has a more or less oblique or implicit relationship to these concerns. The aim of this website is to present as much as possible of what was originally intended for the festival in its transfigured, documented and digitised format.
The festival would not have been possible without the generous support from the following people and places:
Thank you also to Andy Howlett for letting us use his particular and characteristic photographs for the pages of this website.
Special thanks goes to all the people who supported the project all those months ago in February:
Dave Martin, Jacob Clarke, Elliott Smith, Aaron, Kerry Hawkes, Kate Johnson, Andy Thomas, Lisa Meyer, Matt Andrews, Katie Miller, Heidi Murphy, Puvan Tharmanathan, Nick Trepka, Jim Smith, Harry Starling, Kerry Leslie, James Middleton, Sabrina Fung, Ellen Showbrook, Dave Hampson, Simon Harper, Steph Thorpe, Josh Allen, Joe Grassby. Nicki Allen, James Galvin, Andrea Beau, Jo Capper, Julia Gilbert, Gabriel Vogt, James Kennedy, Josh Patrick, Damien Carroll, John McCoy, James McIlwrath, Phil Banting, Penny Smith, Hannah Batchelor, Simon Bailey, Joel Backledge, Mark Hall, Lorraine Mighty, David Harris Jennifer Marshall, Katie Rouse, Sarah Barton, Karen Averby,Emma McKinnery, David Rose, Laura Craven, Matt Cumisky, Jacinta Sing, Ruth Claxton, Emma Dawson, Anna Palmer, Cheryl Jones, Pete Ashton, Audrey Fortune, Emma Footit, CN Heidelberg, Aaron, M Hill, desvergeh, Kendal, Martha, Anna, Andy & Loaf.