‘On The Tip Of My Tongue: Listening Journeys’, by Lauren Craig

You are invited to join a conversation: are you listening?

Take a slow listening approach as you walk the familiar streets of Plymouth hearing from Black and Brown creatives about their experiences living or working in the city. These experiences, like the landmarks, have faded into the background and become part of the everyday; invisibilized, overlooked, and embedded in the fabric of Plymouth and its creative sector.

The Spaces to Speak project, initially funded as an R&D project by the Plymouth Cultural Investment Fund, focussed upon the visibility of African, Caribbean, Asian creatives within Plymouth’s cultural sector. The purpose was to help raise the profile of Black and Brown creativity and voices in Plymouth and to develop conversations to improve dialogues between creatives and arts organisations in the city. Interviews with Black and Brown creatives (living or working in Plymouth) were undertaken unfolding personal and professional narratives of their realities of engaging with Plymouth’s creative sector. Artist Lauren Craig was commissioned to respond to the conversations. As part of the commission titled On the Tip of My Tongue, Craig has created five ‘listening journeys’ across Plymouth, that Craig describes as ‘audio collages’.
The ‘listening journeys’ take a slow listening approach and are intended to create a genuine space to speak, and to highlight the spontaneity and tangle of real conversations. The extended length of the ‘listening journeys’ requires the audience to take the time to listen and pay attention. There are five listening journeys to engage with, A, B, C, D, E, each taking a different route.

Supported by funds from Arts Council England and project partners Plymouth Culture, Barbican Theatre, Association for Art History and Plymouth’s City Centre Company, with additional support from Real Ideas and Switch Systems. A special thank you to Neil Rose (sound), Robert Hills (blacksmith) and Ian Hankey (glass) for their incredible work.

talking on corners is a diy, experimental visual art curating and producing practice underpinned by critical thinking and research. They work with visual artists and organisations commissioning artists, and hosting exhibitions, residencies, talks, study days, writing, as well as offering research, grant writing and consulting services. see www.talkingoncorners.co.uk for more about the Spaces to Speak project and ‘Lauren Craig: On the Tip Of My Tongue’ commission.

Lauren Craig is a London-based cultural futurist. Carefully marrying concept with materiality, she slowly moves between performance, installation, experimental art writing, exhibition-making, moving image, research and photography. Through archival research and reactivation, she centres on lived experience while challenging and reframing past and present dominant narratives