The Northampton Complaints Choir (Open Song)
with NN Contemporary Art
Join choral collective Musarc and NN Contemporary Art for two weekends of singing, cooking, walking, drawing and writing to make a songbook/manifesto for Northampton.
NEW Workshop dates: 20th & 21st May and 1st & 2nd July 2023
Curated by Simon Wright
Join choral collective Musarc and NN Contemporary Art for three weekends of singing, cooking, walking, drawing and writing to make a songbook/manifesto for Northampton. Free and open to everyone. No singing experience needed. Join all or some weekends.
INFORMATION FOR PARTICIPANTS
On Saturday 20th May and Sunday 21st May the workshops will be held in the Carnegie Room on the first floor of the Northamptonshire Central Library. Coffee and a light lunch will be provided at each workshop. For any access needs please email info@nncontemporaryart.org.
The exact location for the workshops on Saturday 1st and Sunday 2nd July is still to be confirmed, but they will be in Northampton town centre.
The project is part of Sensing Place, an initiative by NN Contemporary Art that asks: what does it take to create more just and equal environments? How can we collaboratively inhabit places and foster a sense of belonging in our communities? How do we make a town, and how does it make us. To explore these questions, we are bringing people together to make a choir that sings and moves and makes a manifesto, or a songbook for Northampton — to explore any other questions the choir may have, make and sing the songs it wants to sing, be curious, and loud, and open-minded about the answers we discover.
The choir, which will be led and brought to life with the help of experimental choral collective Musarc, is free to join and open to everyone. It offers an opportunity to meet new people, explore the town and make a wish for it, write poetry, cook and eat together, sing and take part in collective music making and performance. You can join all or some weekend workshops. No previous singing experience needed. Bring an instrument if you play, or your friends if you are in a band or choir.
For more information email simon@nncontemporaryart.org.
About the artist – Musarc
Musarc is one of the UK’s foremost experimental choral assemblies. It was founded in 2008 at what is today the School of Art, Architecture and Design, London Metropolitan University. The choir has a distinct reputation for its interdisciplinary and research-led approach to music and performance, and the space it affords artists and singers to experiment with new ideas. Since its inception, the choir has collaborated with more than one hundred artists and composers, including JenniferWalshe, Lin Chiwei, Laure Provost, Ed Atkins, Jenny Moore, Lina Lapelyte, Sam Belinfante, Fritz Hauser, Neil Luck and many others; and numerous festivals and arts organisations in the UK and abroad – including the BBC Proms, London Contemporary Music Festival, Post Disaster Rooftops EP03 (Taranto, Italy), Palais deTokyo (Paris), the Royal Academy, CCA Goldsmiths, Extra City (Antwerp), Serpentine Gallery, MK Gallery,Wysing Polyphonic, STUK (Leuwen) Cafe OTO, and Whitechapel Gallery.
This project has been commissioned as part of NN Contemporary Art’s Sensing Place, a public programme which explores critical and creative approaches to the public realm and placemaking. As we are creating a new phase of NN Contemporary Art at 24 Guildhall Road, we are looking closely at the policies and processes involved in designing public space and exploring their challenges and outputs. As an organisation, we are actively involved in Northampton’s town regeneration strategies and we want to explore themes such as agency, infrastructure and sustainability across the creative collaborations that merge art, culture, and community-led placemaking. Sensing Place is funded by Arts Council England and West Northamptonshire Borough Council.