Welcome to the ninth instalment of Culture Box!

Delivery 1

Are swallows beginning to prepare for their journey where you are?

• Have you made any long journeys yourself, maybe even crossing the equator as swallows do twice each year?

• Have you, or has anyone you know, got any tattoos? Do you like tattoos? Tattoos often come with a story attached, which you may or may not want to share!

• Do you, or does anyone you know, have any crockery with the Willow Pattern design?

Swallow Birdsong Video

At this time of year, we can still see swallows in our skies, but we are also likely to see them gathering together in groups, often on telegraph and power lines, as they prepare to make their long migration to Sub-Saharan Africa. It is here that they spend our winter months before returning to our shores in April and May. Swallows that come to the UK tend to migrate all the way to South Africa, travelling around 200 miles each day. 

Because of the long journey that swallows make, the swallow tattoo was a symbol used by sailors to show off their sailing experience. As swallows return to the same place each summer to nest, so the tattoo was also seen as a way of bringing the sailor safely home.
We have also chosen the swallow because it features in the Willow Pattern design. Two swallows can often be seen flying in the sky in the centre of the design.

Radiooooo.app

Radiooooo.app is a wonderful website to explore to find music from different countries and decades.

You can find the country that you are interested in on the world map, click on it, and then choose which decade you would like to hear music from.

From some of the interviews we have done with people who are taking part in the Culture Box project, we have heard that many enjoy looking at maps.

• It could be that you were born and spent an earlier part of your life somewhere, before coming to live in the UK. 

• Maybe you lived in or travelled to a different country as part of your work? 

• Do you have friends or family who are somewhere else in the world?

• Perhaps there is somewhere that you have always wanted to visit?

We hope that you will enjoy exploring this brilliant website, and that you might find some music that is special to you.

I Jumped in the River by Tommaso Del Signore

In 2002 artist David Clegg established the first artist residency programme to work with people with dementia in their own homes. The intention was to see if artists, musicians and filmmakers could build relationships with people with dementia and collaborate with them to produce work neither could have made independently.

I Jumped in the River, featuring Sheila Hugo, came about towards the end of the project.

Sheila was over 80, partially blind and with a failing memory when she decided to participate in the residency programme. Her personality had been lost in care plans that simply noted her dementia, blindness and alcoholism. Little was known about her past.

By patiently assembling her story we discovered that Sheila was a descendant of Victor Hugo, writer of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and that she had lived a full and interesting life: She dated a lion tamer and walked hand in hand with the infamous Acid Bath Murderer, becoming an unwitting material witness to the brutal sadomasochistic killing of her friend Marjorie Gardener, when an ill-advised drinking binge had led her to accusations of infidelity against her boyfriend. Sheila stumbled out of the pub having poured a pint of cider over the murderer’s head, leaving him alone with his victim on the very evening of the murder.

Sheila told us how she repeatedly tried and failed to become an actress and performer. I jumped in the River is one of Sheila’s more complete stories.

My idea of setting Sheila’s story to music and creating a ‘pop video’ came about after reviewing footage of one of the interviews and wanting to create a piece that subverted expectations of the kind of art that might be produced in dementia care.

Sheila was a consummate performer, delighting in the opportunity to be filmed telling her story, revelling in the bawdy and playing the innocent with equal conviction. I Jumped in the River gave her the audience she always wanted, at a time when such a thing may have seemed impossible. 

Boat Rowing Soundscape by BBC Sound Effects