Doomed park will live on in song for sick children

Sep 14 2007 by Mike Chapple, Liverpool Daily Post

A DAWN chorus of birds recorded in a doomed public park is destined to provide a therapeutic legacy for thousands of Liverpool hospital and health centre patients.

At the start of the summer, award-winning sound recordist Chris Watson spent a series of early mornings at Springfield Park, Knotty Ash, catching the mating calls of the birds there.

The hours of birdsong have now been edited down to a sound loop lasting five minutes and 40 seconds, to be installed this month at the adjacent Alder Hey Hospital which is to extend on to the park soon. The sound facility will also be put in place at four health centres in the city, with Everton Medical Centre already con- firmed. The Sheffield-born soundscape artist, who first gained recognition in the 1970s as a founder member of cult electro-experimentalists Cabaret Voltaire, recorded the choruses over three successive mornings three months ago when the singing was its peak.

“I’d actually be in Springfield Park when it was pitch black at 2am to capture the pre-dawn quiet before the chorus kicks off. It’s amazing the sense of peace and tranquility you get at the time despite being in a park in the centre of a city,” explained the BAFTA Award winner for Best Factual Sound for his work with BBC TV’s Life of Birds.

“The singing would usually begin between 2.40 and 2.45am and when the first one sings it usually starts off all the others. On the first morning, it was a robin who would have been stimulated by the nearby street or security lights.

“So when they wrote the song they should have replaced the nightingale with a robin that sang in Berkeley Square!”

He added: “There is a very strong sense of narrative in the work where the birdsong builds to a crescendo then fades out as the sounds of the city coming awake begin to take over. In addition to the therapeutic effects that it may have it’s also a sonic memory of that park which will live on after it has gone. So it’s an important document.” Once the sound installation and accompanying art works are in place at Alder Hey, Andrew Curran, a consultant in paediatric neurology at the hospital, will lead a team to investigate the issue of sound within a healthcare environment and its potential impact on healing and recovery.

He said: “There is increasing evidence that creative stimulation within the health environment has a positive effect on healing and recovery from illness.”

The Wildsong at Dawn project is part of the Liverpool FACT centre’s Sonicstreams initiative. It will receive its premiere at the Wood Street arts centre on September 24.

* HEAR a recording of the birdsong at www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/videos-pictures/audio/

mikechapple@dailypost.co.uk