Community Project
Horatio Clare creates new sound walk for St Non's
Members of the public are being invited to contribute to an exciting new project, which aims to celebrate the history, landscape and people of Pembrokeshire’s iconic St Non’s through the medium of sound.
Sitting above the cliffs less than a mile outside St Davids, with views across St Brides Bay and out to Skomer and Grassholm, St Non’s Chapel and Holy Well is where, according to tradition, Non gave birth to David. St Non and St David, the Patron Saint of Wales, influenced the spread of Christianity across the 6th century Celtic world, including in Wales, Ireland, Cornwall and Brittany.
This spectacular, historical and wild location will be the jumping off point for award-winning writers/broadcasters Laura Barton and Horatio Clare, who have been commissioned by Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Authority to create a sound walk podcast on the history, people and landscape of St Non’s. Horatio and Laura will be working alongside Pembrokeshire resident consultant producer Graham Da Gama Howells and BBC Sound engineer Andy Fells.
The St Non’s sound walk will be an audio experience driven by the voices and the music of this special place and community. Listeners will learn about springs, saints, chapels, pilgrims, natural history, language, archaeology, farming and land use, modernity, conservation and the wider significance of this place for Welsh identity and European culture. The finished piece will be available as a podcast to be downloaded from anywhere in the world, with the aim of bringing the place, its history and its people to an international audience.
Call out for contributers and opportunity to learn new skills!
Local writers, artists, musicians, archaeologists, environmentalists, surfers, storytellers, walkers, climbers, boaters and fishers are invited to tell their stories. The production team is also offering opportunities for young residents of the area to gain training, development and work experience in broadcasting, audio recording and research. Contact Horatio Clare on horatioclare@hotmail.com
Horatio Clare has been twice shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year, include Running for the Hills (Somerset Maugham Award), A Single Swallow, Down to the Sea in Ships (Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year), Aubrey and the Terrible Yoot (Branford Boase Award), The Light in the Dark, Orison for a Curlew and Something of his Art: Walking to Lubeck with J S Bach. His latest book is Heavy Light: a story of madness, mania and healing. Horatio presents Radio 3’s acclaimed annual Sound Walks series, which have taken listeners along Offa’s Dyke, across Germany in the footsteps of J S Bach, to the Black Forest for Winter Wanderer, along Greenland’s Arctic Circle Trail and most recently to the East Coast for Sunrise Soundwalks.
Laura Barton writes for a variety of publications including The Guardian, The Observer, and The Independent. Her work has often focused on music, gender, and landscape. She is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4 and has made documentaries on subjects ranging from tomboys to confidence, to music and rivers. Notes From a Musical Island, exploring the relationship between music and the British landscape, ran for three series.
