An immersive soundscape composition created by WERS members took people on a walk on the wildside at its much-awaited launch event at Scotswood Garden.

Wildlife, sea and poetry recordings were weaved together into an enchanting 15 minute piece called ‘Lucia Lima, Lemony Grass’, which led visitors around the community space and encouraged them to appreciate the creativity of our natural surroundings.

The event, which also included a community bbq and campfire, was the much-anticipated culmination of a joint project by WERS members, theatre-maker Amy Golding and artist Martin Heslop.

It was also designed to support sanctuary seekers and people with lived refugee experience to explore the rugged north east countryside and gain experience in field recording, sound editing and composition.

“We’ve been working on this since spring so it’s really exciting that we have been able to share the piece at last”, said Amy.

“We started by going on a series of walks throughout Northumberland where we captured nature sounds with our recorders and shared stories and memories of the places our trips reminded us of.

“Then we held some poetry workshops and used the poems within the piece.”

“It was important to the group that we performed this somewhere accessible to other people so Scotswood Garden was the perfect place in the city to do that.”

Korey Bonnett, a project member, turned charismatic guide for the event, giving headsets for people to hear the composition and leading them on a specially curated walk of the gardens.

“When we chose Scotswood Garden we decided to make our piece fit the planned route, by carefully matching the sounds to the surroundings”, he said.

“I loved getting involved with the technical side and visiting different places in the countryside. It’s hard to pick a favourite place we visited but I felt a great connection to Cullercoats as I flew a kite there for the first time and it reminded me of home.

“I really hope this is the first of more guided sound walks we can have in the garden to build awareness of Scotswood Garden, the work of WERS and refugee rights.”

Speaking about their reaction to the piece, Rowan and Lily, two attendees on the night, said: “It was beautiful, with such good layering of sounds and a really peaceful feeling.”

Other potential options for the composition are still being explored to help it be heard by more people.

“We’re looking into different options, such as maybe creating self-guided walks in the garden where people can use QR codes to listen to it as they walk around”, said Martin.

“It was great to be involved in such a collaborative piece where we were led by what our participants wanted to do.”