Stef Conner, Vivien Ellis & Charlotte Baskerville
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RCH/006, Ron Cooke Hub, Campus East, University of York (Map)
Event details
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How can singing help communities engage creatively with cultural heritage in ways that are participatory and meaningful in the present? In this session, Rachel Cowgill, Stef Conner, Charlotte Baskerville, and Vivien Ellis explore how archival materials and local histories can become creative tools that empower people to move from receivers of sanctioned narratives to active interpreters and makers of historically inspired new music, rooted in place.
Drawing on projects involving broadside ballads, community composition, local histories, and musical co-creation, we’ll examine the role of place in shaping musical identity, compare experiences of dialogue and exchange with collaborators, and consider how participatory music-making in spaces that hold meaning for communities can foster belonging, pride, and new understandings of cultural value.
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About the speakers
Charlotte Baskerville read music at Christ’s College, Cambridge, and completed a master’s thesis on music cognition under Prof. Ian Cross. A former choral scholar at Christ’s, she developed a strong interest in choral composition under Christopher Brown (Clare College). Her compositions are published by Encore Publications, Chichester Music Press and Banks Music Publications (Kassian Choral Series), and recorded on the Resonus Classics label by St Martin’s Voices. Charlotte is currently a Sir Jack Lyons Research Scholar undertaking a PhD in Composition at the University of York. Her research explores placemaking through community- and heritage-driven composition, investigating how collaborative feedback between composers and communities can foster cultural wellbeing and shared ownership of new music. Alongside her research she remains active as a conductor, educator, and singer.
Stef Conner is a composer, singer and Lecturer in Music at the University of York whose work explores connections between Early music, folk traditions and contemporary composition. Her projects frequently draw on historical texts, archival materials, and oral traditions, transforming them through new performance and collaborative music-making. Stef performs internationally as a specialist in Very Early and experimental vocal music and leads creative heritage projects that invite singers and communities to reinterpret historical material through composition and performance.
Rachel Cowgill is Professor of Music at the University of York and Director of the Humanities Research Centre. A cultural-historical musicologist, her research explores music’s relationships with history, place and community, with particular interests in performance history, musical life in Britain, and community archiving. She initiated and co-led the interdisciplinary StreetLife project, which brought together historians, archaeologists, musicians and local partners to reconnect York’s communities with the heritage of Coney Street. Through exhibitions, performances, oral-history projects and community archives – including the Willow Community Digital Archive documenting a much-loved local music venue – the project explored how musical memory and heritage can play a role in reimagining the future of historic urban spaces. Rachel is also Principal Investigator of the AHRC-funded InterMusE project on digital archiving of musical events. She was awarded an MBE in December 2023 ‘for services to Culture, to Education and to the Arts’.
Vivien Ellis is a singer and educator specialising in Early and folk music. She has performed and recorded with ensembles including Sinfonye, The Dufay Collective, The Telling and The Carnival Band, and has appeared in seasons at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company. Her recording of early Spanish music, Cancionero, received a Grammy Award nomination. She has published two articles on arts and health, and her practice as a vocal leader is underpinned by commitment to singing for wellbeing. She is currently completing an MA exploring voice, narrative and embodied practice in archives and museums. Her recent project Strange Doings in London – The Songs and Ballads of St Giles, developed for the Bloomsbury Festival, brought communities and choirs together to explore broadside ballads through archival research, informal concerts and ‘ballad walks’ that animate local history through performance.
Venue details
Wheelchair accessible