Green Croft Arts’ Collision & Conflict is a geolocated sound walk through the Northumberland landscape launching Friday 26 March, available into October 2021. 

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Using ECHOES: an interactive GPS-triggered sound app, the collision and conflict of the landscape will unfold through music, sound, storytelling and spoken word. You will follow our plotted sound walk, triggering artistic responses connected to specific locations on the route; these sound responses make up an immersive geolocative experience that you can enjoy through your headphones.

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Often called the Borderlands or Forgotten Lands, the area is wild, bleak, beautiful, and unforgiving. Conflict over boundaries have dominated the history of the area, leaving scars present on the landscape. Thirlwall Castle is where the barbarians ‘thirled’, or threw down part of the wall, during a raid in Roman times. Romans were replaced with Reivers, with Gilsland at the centre of conflict and raids between Reiver families. Conflict continues in contemporary rural Britain with contested views on what land should be used for (production, consumption, preservation, diversification), women and migrants in farming, global warming and tourism.

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In December 2020, Green Croft Arts commissioned 14 artists with strong links to Northumberland and Cumbria at different points in their career, to have a creative response in song, music, sound, story, spoken word or poetry that explores the commonality between historical or archaeological conflict and issues that affect contemporary rural communities today. As people walk through the landscape these artistic responses unfold as part of an immersive geolocative experience linking the responses to a specific location along the walk.

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