This workshop was commissioned by Flourish, a free family art school during holidays for North Kensington families directly and indirectly affected by Grenfell Tower fire.

Using various shaped vessels filled with different levels of water children were invited to experiment with creating harmonies and tonal pitches. They were encouraged to tap the vessels with their hand that was picked up by a contact microphone and then amplified through headphones. A second microphone recorded their reflections on the listening experience. These were then mixed and reworked into a composition and shown as part of a community exhibition at Maxilla Studios along with clay casts the children had made.

Shul, “a mark that remains after that which made it has passed by–a footprint, for example. In other contexts, shul is used to describe the scarred hollow in the ground where a house once stood, the channel worn through rock where a river runs in flood, the indentation in the grass where an animal slept last night. All of these are shul: the impression of something that used to be there. As a shul, emptiness can be compared to the impression of something that used to be there.” Rebecca Solnit