The Sill – Northumberland National Park

Northumberland National Park is home to the cleanest rivers, clearest air and darkest skies in all of England. It’s also where you’ll find The Sill: National Landscape Discovery Centre, a visitors first stop at the park featuring exhibitions such as the newly opened ‘The Lost Spells: Listening to a Landscape of Voices’.

Inspired by the poems in ‘The Lost Spells’ (a beautiful book of poems and artwork by beloved creative duo Robert Macfarlane & Jackie Morris), this new exhibition was created where audio is used to encourage visitors to listen to the sounds of nature and consider how habitat loss, climate change and our collective impact on biodiversity could see some of these sounds lost forever.

A number of our devices were used throughout this new exhibition, such as the sound post pictured above which features a recording of a song by vocalist, multi-instrumentalist and producer, Cosmo Sheldrake. The unit itself is made from a reclaimed Beech tree that was damaged in Storm Arwen with a SoundClip audio device and Heavy Duty Handset, audio is triggered via a simple button press.

In another example a series of spoken word pieces, wild nature calls and acoustic music created by musicians from the ‘Spell Songs ensemble’ were used alongside SoundClips and Soundshowers to create an ambient soundscape which invites audiences to listen and reflect on nature.

A touch screen interactive with our MKII Headphones allows visitors to create their own nature songs using various live recordings of wildlife. As you can see from these examples our range of products were used in a versatile way to create engaging user experiences. Ed Hudspeth, Data & Digital Manager at Northumberland National Park Authority, had this to say about our involvement with the project;

“Blackbox AV helped us to specify exactly what kit we needed in order to create the exhibits exactly as we had envisaged them. The installation was quick and simple thanks to the guidance of their technical specialists.”