100 Voices - an immersive sound installation created from five months of research, workshops and conversation with staff, patients, and visitors in 12 hospitals across four NHS Foundation Trusts, including Lancashire Teaching Hospitals - is coming to Royal Preston Hospital next week.
The unique installation will be located in the Chapel from Monday 20 November to Thursday 30 November in a birch wooden roundhouse, where audiences will experience 360 degree audio, immersed in the voices of 100 people from different hospital communities reflecting on their daily lives and work, their challenges, joys, inspirations and losses.
With reflections expressed directly by people rarely heard - those working in service, patients, visiting local communities and the invisible, extended workforce of the NHS, these 100 anonymous voices are heard as individuals and as a crowd, as a flock of voices and as a tidal wave of ideas.
Hazel Gould and Hannah Conway of creators Sound Voice explained the concept: “100 Voices is an immersive sound and music work in which we hear fragments of 100 conversations recorded in June and July 2023 in 12 hospitals across the country.
“We seek to represent a true cross-section of the incredible encounters we had during our time in the hospitals. The voices that we hear span age, class, race and gender, displaying the enormous range of identities, backgrounds, perspectives, and experience that congregate under the umbrella of the NHS. This piece aims to be an authentic snapshot of people, place, and time."
Trust Doctor, Thomas Moors, also co-founding medical director of Sound Voice, added: “The installation could not be timed better in the year of the NHS’s 75th anniversary – it is a celebration of everyone’s contribution.
“The recordings from 100 different, personal stories are intertwined with song and music, their voice, their story, your ears, your attention. Let’s listen to each other and celebrate 75 years of the NHS, appreciate the great variety of roles and the richness we all bring.”
The installation focuses on 100 voices recorded in 12 hospitals, 100 conversations in music and in words - what does it mean to have a voice? How do you listen? What will you hear?
Four operatic songs have also been drawn from the hundreds of conversations and reflections which have taken place across all the hospitals. Voiced by the fictional characters of The Midwife, The Porter, The Patient and The Manager, these songs are interwoven into these voices with an original musical score. Each character explores what it means to have a voice, how we make ourselves heard and how we listen to others.
THE PATIENT: One patient in a bed on a busy ward. He listens more than he speaks.
THE MANAGER: Dealing with numbers and spreadsheets, the Manager knows that every statistic tells a story.
THE MIDWIFE: A dedicated listener, she has learned to understand languages beyond the spoken word.
THE PORTER: He carries people on the most important journeys of their lives.
The project has been funded by Arts Council England, CUH NHS Foundation Trust, UCLH NHS Foundation Trust, Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, UHBW NHS Foundation Trust, Britten Pears Arts and supported by PENTAX Medical.
Please be advised: 100 Voices contains honest descriptions of work in hospitals including themes of end of life and critical care.
Please see 100voices.uk for tour locations, dates and times, and for more information, please visit: soundvoice.org
The piece has already been previewed by BBC Radio 3 on their Music Matters show on Saturday, 11 November, available to listen to on BBC Sounds between 14:50 min and 25:55 min at https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001s5gt
