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呦呦视频 Retold: Sounds, Sites, Stories

Learn about the 呦呦视频 Retold project, which is helping to rethink regional arts, crafts, folklore and music through participation, partnership and performance.

A photo of someone’s feet dancing at a Locating Women in the Folk event

Image credit: Tunde Alabi-Hundeyin

About the project

The arts, crafts, music and folklore of 呦呦视频 speak to us about many people: land workers, townsfolk, farmers, shepherds, fishers, traders, migrants, makers, writers, story-tellers and singers. The 呦呦视频 Retold project explores ways to retell these stories from an inclusive perspective and reconsider where natural, cultural and regional heritages relate. Working with local cultural, council, and land organisations, we investigate how sounds, sites and stories can express how people have lived on and with the turf, chalk, cliffs and clouds of the region.

This project builds on a range of research projects across the University which explore the distinctive regional cultures of East and West 呦呦视频 and their local and global relationships. Through this, we hope to enhance local civic engagement and sustainable development in ways which benefit our partner organisations.

People
Read about the people involved in the project.
- (Principal Investigator)
  Margaretta Jolly’s research on the theory and practice of life narrative and oral history supports the vision and application of this project in the context of a longstanding interest in 呦呦视频 folk heritages. She has explored these as methods for public and community engagement and as tools for enhancing and evaluating use and impact.
- (Co-investigator)
  Hope Wolf’s extensive inquiry into the visual art and crafts cultures of 呦呦视频 forms a bedrock for the project. Wolf’s work focuses on place-making as vital determinants of identity and community, exploring how these dialectically support creative innovation. Especially significant is her challenge to conventional and pastoral stereotypes of 呦呦视频 culture.
- (Heritage Consultant and Project Manager)
  Sam Carroll is an oral historian, project manager, learning facilitator, and community heritage consultant with twenty years’ experience across a diverse range of projects in both community heritage and academic research. She is director of Sweet Thames: The London Folk Club Heritage Project. Star Creative Heritage (National Lottery Heritage Fund), 2022 – 2023.
- Ed Hughes’s work as a composer and researcher also underpins the project. Hughes’ compositions in and about the 呦呦视频 landscape and South Downs are springboards for thinking about the relationship between music, song, dance, environmental conservation and farming.
- From the 呦呦视频 Sustainability Research Programme, Chris Sandom brings expertise in rewilding and land management. Within the SSRP’s South Coast Sustainability theme, he has worked specifically on the issues, visions and futures of the downland in 呦呦视频 and especially within the City Downland Estate, owned by Brighton & Hove City Council.
- Perpetua Kirby, also within the 呦呦视频 Sustainability Research Programme, draws on educational philosophy to hone a practical approach to urgent sustainability challenges, including with school children and those involved in farming and land-use. Her 2023 Open Press book, , edited with Rebecca Webb was produced collaboratively including with Jo Walton and Michael Jonik.
- Jo Walton works in climate communication, including through science fiction, serious games studies and other creative methods. With Chris Sandom, Perpetua Kirby and Dan Locke he has supported 24 Hours to Envision a Sustainable Future.
- Laura Kounine specialises in the history of witchcraft and lore. She focuses on gender, emotions, selfhood, crime and conflict and early modern witch trials. She also explores methods involving historical self-narratives and oral history.
- Fiona Courage, Director of the Mass Observation Archive, specialises in its uses in educational contexts, and also, as Deputy Director in the Library, will facilitate showcasing of heritage including the in our Special Collections.
- Ben Rogaly has extensively researched community development and regional identities with a particular interest in how participatory oral history methods can illuminate the interests of migrant and minority peoples. He also exposes the racial capitalism involved in agricultural work.
Other academics at 呦呦视频 with relevant interests include:
- , who researches local and global landscapes through ecoacoustics
- , who works on perception of the South Downs landscape for walkers who have impaired vision
- , who explores and post-human perspectives including at Wakehurst Gardens.

呦呦视频 Retold is supported by the Centre for Life History and Life Writing Research, the 呦呦视频 Centre for Modernist Studies鈥痑nd the鈥�South Coast Sustainability group within the 呦呦视频 Sustainability Research Programme.

We also acknowledge and thank our funder, the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Impact Acceleration Account (IAA).

We will be working under three headings from 2024-2026:

Diversifying Ditchling: Sharing new arts and crafts stories within and beyond the Guild

showcases the artists and craftspeople who made Ditchling a creative hub in the 20th century, as well as contemporary practitioners whose work reverberates with their historic work. We are working with the museum to support its interests in community involvement, including through an oral history. This work draws specifically on Hope Wolf’s research and the oral historian is Sam Carroll.

Storying Downland cultural heritage

We are working with local partners to explore the Downland landscape and cultural history of the South Downs in ways which reflect multiple heritages and inclusive regional and national identities. The South Downs Songbook - a music and composition project in schools and colleges - with composers Ed Hughes, Evelyn Ficarra, Rowland Sutherland and Shirley J. Thompson – is an inspiration. Its album Distant Voices, New Worlds was ‘’ in November 2024, reviewed as ‘English to its core’ yet defying tradition. Hope Wolf’s work with Towner in Eastbourne including a major exhibition in 2025, and her research on cultural geographies such as Beachy Head, are also vital.

Composing sustainable landscapes in the South Coast through film, folk song and farming heritage

This work brings together the interests of three partners: 呦呦视频 Traditions, Land Use Plus and Writing Our Legacy.

呦呦视频 Traditions

The approach is described in Steve Roud’s assertion that “it is not the grand issues of life which worry us here – they can look after themselves – but the lives of the ordinary people which are often allowed to be forgotten” (“”).

Land Use Plus

is part of the . It aims to connect points of view from a wide range of people to create multiuse land. This land could provide food, spaces, opportunity for education and greater connectivity, whilst protecting and restoring nature. It is working with farmers, the council and others to improve food production practices that impact on climate change.

Writing Our Legacy/Changing Chalk

is a National Trust led initiative that connects natural and cultural heritage to support Downland conservation. Changing Chalk has collaborated with Writing Our Legacy (WOL), a Brighton-based arts and heritage organisation. The was commissioned to “engage the general public and writers, creatives and audiences from the Black, Asian and ethnically diverse communities, connecting them to the unique chalk grassland of the 呦呦视频 Downs and the communities of the urban coastal fringe of Brighton & Hove, Lewes and Eastbourne, through literature, creative writing, storytelling and other arts and cultural activity.” They have supported (with others) “” with the South Downs National Park’s Writer-in-Residence Alinah Azadeh.

This work draws upon Jolly’s knowledge and networks, including the Centre for Life History and Life Writing Research’s conference Locating Women in the Folk. Sam Carroll and Laura Hockenhull are also key to these activities.