Noise Summit

Noise Summit was a project commissioned by SLG as part of their Play Local programme. The project happened over two years (2013/14) on the Wyndham, Comber and Pelican Estates near the South London Gallery. The idea for the project began with Barby Asante’s reflections on the 2011 London riots. Thinking about ‘how young people begin to articulate themselves and find defence mechanisms’ in the city, she wanted to explore how certain children and young people are considered unacceptable in public space.

Offering children a microphone, PA system and receptive musicians to play with, Noise Summit creates a format that avoids a separation between rehearsal and performance presenting the play process as performance. Rather than “look what I made”, Noise Summit is “look at me;” “look what I’m making;” as children’s engagement with sound and popular culture is displayed out loud in an often-messy dialogue with the people that they live around and the spaces and places that they call home. 

A Noise Summit video was also presented as part of an installation Run Through made in collaboration with architect and musician Gian Givanni for ‘BLUEPRINT: Whose urban appropriation is this?’, a multidisciplinary group exhibition and public programme curated by Metro 54 at TENT in Rotterdam, 2017.

Credit of Noise Summit project:

Project Producer and Co facilitator at SLG: Jack James 

Musician and Co-facilitator: Floetic Lara 

Musician: Donna Thompson

Musician: John Atterbury 

Musician: Tyrone Issac Stuart 

Film Documentation: Gordon Beswick and the children and young people of the Wyndham, Comber and Pelican Estates  

Thank you to the residents of Wyndham, Comber and Pelican Estates for embracing the project and its challenges