As part of the project we invited Runcorn-based avant garde composer Wendy Smith to create a piece of sonic art to help document the project.
She combined archival recordings of the plays being performed with field recordings from the workshops that we ran with children and young people to create a unique composition that can be heard via the Soundcloud link below.

SoulFolk by Wendy Smith on Soundcloud

Here is Wendy's own synopsis of the piece and her process.

Soul Folk is a commission work by Minerva Arts for The Souling Project. This project is concerned with the re-visiting and re-invigorating of Folk Dramas known as Souling, which were performed throughout Cheshire. As the folk legacy focus is on the oral tradition of preserving folk culture, through verbally transmitting and receiving folk material, it was important to represent this oral process in Soul Folk. This was achieved by using vocal sounds to emphasize the verbal folk sharing tradition. Throughout the majority of Soul Folk, vocal sounds are the main focus. Except in the introduction, were they symbolize the role memory holds in the folk oral tradition, which folk music relies on, as it is not traditionally notated or written down. The gestural causality buildups and decays in the introduction sonically represent the memories cognitive motion, trying to remember and transmit the language ascribed to the Souling play tradition. It is not until after the first main climax at 0’34, that the Souling language is fully revived. But the vocal sounds do not come back in a linear narrative, as the breath of the vocals and lyrical material highlights the changing nature of the folk Souling plays oral tradition, as each Cheshire community transmits their own personal version of Souling plays, which constantly changed and adapted through different performances.
 
Furthermore, the vocal sound material featured in Soul Folk also continues the preservation of the oral folk tradition, by sourcing a number of vocal parts from different Cheshire folk Souling plays sources. This includes recent field recordings of new folk material and historical archival recordings. The field recording material presented in Soul Folk captures young people creating their own Souling songs through lyrical expression. The inclusion of these new vocal lyrics, alongside historical recording shows the development of the oral folk tradition, from its roots, to recent adaptations. Exclusively, Soul Folk features the children of Astbury St Mary's Church of England Primary School and their Souling song, which was guided by the creative vision and direction of composer Melissa Douglas. In this Souling song the children embraced their local village of Astbury’s cultural heritage, through the lyrics they created. Specifically, Soul Folk uses the first two lines of the children’s Souling song, ‘Our Little village of Astbury holds May Day, Our Little village of Astbury let’s say hurray!’. In particular, these two lines communicate the children’s excited vocals through their expression, which is first heard in Soul Folk at 0’57.
 
Soul Folk also features historical archival recordings of Souling play’s songs, in particular, the first verse of the Souling Song featured on The Soul Cakers of Cheshire: Field Recordings of Traditional Mummers Songs and Play Text.
We are two; all three good hearted lads and we’re all in one mind,
And we have come a Souling good nature to find,
Oh we have come a Souling as it does appear,
And it’s all that we are Souling for is your money and good beer.
This traditional Souling Song provided Soul Folk with interesting vocal timbral and lyrical gestural material. In addition, sounds were sourced from the static crackling noises produced by the vinyl recording of The Soul Cakers of Cheshire Souling Song. These static crackling sounds can normally be taken for granted, ignored or disregarded by the receiver. This occurs as they are expected, as a technical byproduct of analogue technology. In our sound perfect digital age, they can also be seen as extraneous and unwanted noises. However, for this receiver these noises added depth to the listening experience of this Souling Song, as the noise sounds embodied the wear and tear of the folk oral tradition across time. These sounds also date the recording, giving it a sense of time, atmosphere and character. Therefore, making it crucial to source and include the glitch sound material produced by the playback of the vinyl recording. This sound material can be heard throughout the different textual material in Soul Folk.

On Wednesday 13th December the project team arrived in Congleton to share the final results from the project at our closing event. The evening was attended by council representatives from Newbold Astbury cum Moreton Parish and by the Deputy Mayor of Congleton.
The event kicked off with a brilliant presentation on the history of Souling from Duncan Broomhead and continued with the sharing of the film of our Knutsford performance 'Your Money and Good Cheer'; the premiere of Wendy Smith's Soundscape commission and the sharing of the proofs for our final publication which arrived in hard copy form at the end of that wee.
A huge thank you to all who attended and to all who have participated and contributed to the project. We will be delivering copies of the book to all partners throughout January.

Well the end of October has finally come and we have been sharing the final results of our performance projects across Cheshire...

On the 19th October, Astbury St Mary's Primary School performed their show to assembled parents and friends at school.
On the 28th October Bunbury Aldersay Primary School performed their final piece to an impressive group of 50 people at Bunbury Mill where the wonderful Mill volunteers had also provided refreshments including Soul Cakes!
On Monday 30th October Express Arts Lymm Youth Theatre performed their brilliant version of the Soul Play at Lymm Community Centre.

The final outing for the project will be a celebration event at Congleton Town Hall on the 13th December where we will share the performances that have been created across the performance and launch the publication that we are currently working on bringing together all the scripts that have been created  plus archive material, photos and contextual and historical information.
More details about this event will be published here soon.

Well Septembe is now upon us so I thought I would write a little update on the project progress so far an on what we will be gatting up to in the next few busy months..

Knutsford Heritage Open Days
We are delighted to be presenting a new piece of street theatre, 'Your Money and Good Cheer' at the Knutsford Heritage Open Days on Satuday 9th September. The open days are an amazing event led by the Knutsford Promenades group who have presenetd many fantastic events in Knutsford in the past.
Our play will be performed at Midday, 1.30pm and 3pm in Regent Street right in the centre of Knutsford and will be a rollicking fifteen minutes of fun, reflecting on our journey in the Souling project so far. Hope you can join us!

Schools Projects
Our projects in Astbury C of E Primary School and Bunbury Aldersay Primary School kick off during the week beginning 11th September. Both school groups will initially be working on developing new songs for their plays with Composer Melissa Douglas and Musician Virginia Kettle. Folling these sessions they will move onto the drama element of the project.

Lymm Youth Theatre
Thanks to our friends at Express Youth Theatre, we will also be working with their Lymm group to produce a version of the plays. This group will be having their history session with lead researchers Chris and Mike Brocken on the 18th September and from then on they will move on to devising their own play from the source material provided by the Souling story.

In the next few weeks we hope to be able to announce one final project and to be able to share with you all the performance dates for our groups.

Well the summer holidays are now upon us and this marks more or less the halfway point in the Souling project. So far we have...
*Delivered a presentation to Congleton History Society
*Delivered young people's research sessions to 2 primary schools
*Delivered a programme of family friendly activity at the Rustic Music and Arts Festival, Northwich
*Shared information about the project on BBC Radio Merseyside and in the Congleton Chronicle

In the coming months we will...
*Share our schools performances in Bunbury and Astbury
*Develop a community performance in Congleton
*Work with a Youth Theatre group in Lymm
*Compile our final publication

Watch this space!

On Saturday 1st July, we brought our Souling workshops to the Rustic Music and Arts Festival in Dutton, sandwiched just between Northwich and Runcorn. This is a family friendly festival where kids and adults can watch bands, take part in poetry and circus workshops and performances and basically have lots of fun in a field!
Our workshops consisted of a big dressing up box to dress up as the characters, the chance to act out the original play script and a big sing-song to the two Souling songs.
We engaged with over 35 people thorughout the day including children and adults. It was great to see so many parents joining in with their children and getting into the spirit of the plays.
Also with us for the day was our sonic artist Wendy who was taking field recordings of the workshops and of the festival more generally to go into her composition.

On the 27th June, research team Mike and Chris headed over to Bunbury Aldersay CofE Primary School to deliver their introductory sessions. This school, similarly to Astbury will be working to stage their play and add their own unique elements to it. 
In this workshop, the children learnt about the history of the plays and had the opportunity to act out their version, learn the Souling song and think about what characters they may wish to add into the play when they create their very own version of it. 

Teacher Sarah Frost gave some feedback at the end of the session to say:
'The children really enjoyed it and are looking forward to the project next year. It was evident that a lot of effort has already been put into the project and your parents were very accommodating, Knowledgeable and explained the history wonderfully.'

On the 23rd May we ran our first schools workshops for the project at Astbury St. Mary's Primary School. These sessions were run by lead researchers Christine and Mike Brocken and were supported by our Work Based Learning student from the University of Chester, Ashleigh Husselbee. Ashleigh has kindly written us a blog all about the session.

Minerva Arts has recently embarked on an exciting new project led by Chris and Michael Brocken. They have been taking the children of Astbury on a journey into Cheshire’s past of Soul Plays. Souling is a type of Drama native to Cheshire that Chris and Michael want to share with the children of today. The aim is to have them create their own Soul Play and bring it back into the Drama of today. The children have so far been practicing scenes and learning all about the types of songs and characters that are involved in Soul Plays. The workshop was interactive right from the beginning with Chris asking questions about what holidays they celebrate. The children then sang along to the songs that are typically in a Soul Play, both with them being played on a tape and the guitar by Michael which helped them to get a real feel of what a soul play is like. They then listened to a short play, as Soul Plays usually were, and were instantly eager to get up and perform it. They split into two characters and were all assigned a role, equipped with a signature piece of clothing. The children worked together to create their own version of a Soul Play, using the original play as just a base. This allowed creativity to flow beautifully and the children really had a lot of fun, as well as learning loads of information and skills.

Last week we had another exciting development on the Souling project as we welcomed a new artist into the fold.
Wendy Smith is an electronic musician who has recently been studying at Liverpool Hope University under reknowned composer Manuela Blackburn. She has been highly commended for her compositions and we are thrilled that she has agreed to come and create a brand new piece of music for this project.
Wendy will be attending workshops across the project including our sessions at the Rustic Festival in July and will be collecting sounds from the young people and community members who we will be working with. Alongside this field recording she will be using the archival recordings of historical Souling plays that we have found through our research and using all this material to create a sonic art piece that we will share at our final performances in the Autumn.