Music / Bristol Beacon
City’s creativity turned into A New Song for Bristol
In November 2020 the Bristol Beacon put out a call to the public for submissions for A New Song for Bristol.
Now, a year on from the announcement of the first lockdown, the song has been released.
The task of turning the submissions into a song was taken by Bristol-based folk-rock artists This is the Kit and Bucky.
Submissions for the track came in many different forms: poems, songs, voice notes and journal entries.
All were created by members of the Bristol public as a way to “encourage everyone to express themselves through words, music or song and to share their experiences”.
“I think A New Song For Bristol has brought to the people of Bristol a really nice opportunity to contribute to a group community project,” says Kate Stables, of This is the Kit.
“For me that is the most beautiful bit of the project. Then of course on a personal level, getting to use everyone’s contributions to write a song and to be working on it with Bristol musical heroes Bucky is just a total privilege.”
The project was inspired by the mass singing events at the Bristol Beacon, then known as Colston Hall, during World War Two.
“It struck me how we associate certain music with certain events,” says Polly Eldridge, producer of Sound UK’s A Song for Us project,
“Songs that brought people together during war, civil rights movements or just at special times. Music can encompass complicated feelings of sorrow, joy, hope, solidarity.”
This is the Kit and Bucky’s song is one of five in a wider national project, A Song for Us, with artists from South Yorkshire, Cornwall, East Riding and Devon also working on the project.
The submissions are being used as inspiration for a collective of artists, including Lady Nade, Kayla Painter, Javeon, Solomon O.B, Grove, KALA CHNG and composer, musician and associate director of Paraorchestra, Lloyd Coleman for more compositions that document this time in the city.
Once the lockdown restrictions are lifted the submissions and song’s created will be collated into a living archive and included in a heritage display at the Bristol Beacon.
One letter that was submitted. Image: Plaster
Main image: Plaster
Read more: Creating a new piece of music that paints a picture of Bristol in 2020
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