A Path through the Woods

With June Boyce-Tillman

As part of the Telling Encounters conference at St Martin in the Fields in London, UK, a group of us associated with the University of Winchester, initiated a music workshop for people with disabilities. Conducted on the ZOOM platform, the workshop was based on poems and pictures from the pandemic around which people improvised and recorded.

We also used the traditional song Scarborough Fair with its repetition of the healing herbs. The image of a finding a way through the woods seemed appropriate for people trying to survive the pandemic and we chose a rondo structure with the university folk group’s performance of the folksong as a recurring refrain.

Neil Valentine , director of the Winchester University Music Centre wove the sounds together with images of people reading poems; visual images were added from the New Forest by the Rev Rachel Noel. This produced a moving piece – A Path through the woods – that gave some sense of movement through and meaning for the pandemic. Here, by using multiple art forms and technology in an innovative way meaning and propose could be supported.