TreeWeekender Walk

Let’s address the elephant in the room. We all get inside our heads sometimes, and those voices love to chat. A bickering old married couple's worth of little you’s running operations, talking you through every thought, feeling, ambition, memory, and action. So let’s give them the platform they really desire. Join your guides, a pairing going by the names of Optimism and Pessimism, on a geolocated audio experience around Bath. So, shoes on, headphones in. Let’s have a chat.

A sound walk for young audiences about climate justice, Mary Oliver and climate joy. Featuring composition, poetry and prose. Centering on themes of a larger reality, relationships and change. "Climate justice offers us a portal. A gateway from this world into the next."

In Bath’s Royal Victoria Park, characters have escaped from two Shakespeare plays. Is this a dream of midsummer with witches, or a Scottish nightmare with a donkey-headed fool? An introduction and 8 short scenes take you on a mile-long walk, looping from the top of Cow Lane around the park, to finish near the Pavilion Cafe. Stopping to listen to each scene, it will take around an hour if you do it all in one go. NB Download the walk over Wifi, before coming to the park. START at the top of Cow Lane (at 51.3869497, -2.3720913) and cross over onto the path across the grassy open space to begin with the Introduction (1). Afterwards, please send us your feedback: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/KGJKZM7 (your response is anonymous) A Fire and Air production directed by Gillian Roberts for Sparkfest Digital 2021.

Many years ago, a young girl lived in the Crescent in Royal Victoria Park. She would spend her days gazing out the window wanting to explore the scenery around her. One day she took her canvas and paints to explore the park, creating authentic pictures, taking inspiration from her surroundings. This was just the beginning of what became her daily ritual, a stroll through the park whilst taking in the beautiful scenery and sounds of nature. She would capture every day through audio recordings which became a secret diary of her life. These recordings have recently been discovered and today we will take you through the very final recording that ever existed. A recording that to this day we can’t explain. But as you listen, you will get an insight into the life of Aurora the Artist and much like the young girl, be inspired by the beautiful surroundings at Victoria park.

Bath Union Workhouse had two burial grounds...this sound walk is an invitation to follow a route between the two burial grounds and two different journeys. There is music, poetry and information. If you begin at the car park for St Martins Hospital you will arrive at a field just off the Wellsway, Bath. Neither burial ground is marked on most current maps. In a field off the Wellsway over 3100 bodies lie in unmarked graves, the last remains of those who died of poverty in the Bath workhouse between 1858 and 1899. In the low winter sun you can make out the mounds and depressions of the burials. Here in this field a rich city in a rich country at the centre of the richest Empire dumped the bodies of its poor. The dead were officially and punitively denied the dignity of a 'decent' funeral, bodies were taken in a tunnel under the road and buried behind high stone walls. The authorities were consoled that at least they were buried in consecrated ground. The ground is still consecrated. Bath and NE Somerset Council still cut the grass..and slowly with new cutting patterns the field is being transformed into a better loved and more reflective place. Following the sounds you will pass the old workhouse building and a chapel. 1100 bodies of those who died between 1838 and 1858 lie in unmarked graves here in a small triangle of land between the chapel and the hospital car park. Walk listen and reflect The only memorial outside the chapel is to Rock 'n' Roll hero, Eddie Cochran who died here following a car crash near Chippenham in 1960. Eddie's body was flown to the US and buried in California: three steps to heaven, with step one taken in Bath's former Workhouse. There are no memorials to the Workhouse dead....until now More info here: https://www.walknowtracks.co.uk/walkingthenames.html

As you walk in this space, listen..... Below your feet are the bodies of more than 3000 people who died of poverty in the Bath Union Workhouse between 1858 and 1899. There are layered readings from the Burial Register made during the virus lockdown, poetry from John Payne and perhaps some more. Let it go quiet, move to trigger the next Echo. Use the play and pause button to renew Echoes Here in this field a rich city in a rich country at the centre of the richest Empire dumped the bodies of its poor. The dead were officially and punitively denied the dignity of a 'decent' funeral, bodies were taken in a tunnel under the road and buried behind high stone walls. The authorities were consoled that at least they were buried in consecrated ground. The ground is still consecrated. Bath and NE Somerset Council own and manage the site. Pay your respects by adding to the 'poor' memorial in the centre with a name flag or flowers or a small stone. More info: https://www.walknowtracks.co.uk/walkingthenames.html

Join us on a journey of memorialising the thousands of the Bath Union Workhouse workers who were buried in unmarked graves on unmarked land...

As you enter the burial ground, think, reflect and listen. 3,100 bodies lie in unmarked graves and the burial ground doesn't even exist on a current map. We attended an event in which volunteers planted a wildflower meadow to memorialise the lives lost as a result of poverty in the Bath workhouse between 1858 and 1899. "Here in this field a rich city in a rich country at the centre of the richest empire dumped the bodies of its poor." We captured audio recordings during the wildflower planting and have used these to create this immersive experience.

An immersive audio retelling of Olaf Stapledon’s short story, ‘The Man Who Became a Tree’, using an augmented forest soundscape, inviting audiences to listen to the inner life of a tree.