Summary
The project team at Newcastle University created a record in sound of the spontaneous memorial at the Angel of the North in Gateshead, in the north-east of England.
Background
For at least six years, visitors to the Angel of the North have been leaving tributes to commemorate loved ones in a stand of trees a short distance from the sculpture. Tributes left at the Angel of the North site include flowers, candles, wind chimes, clothing, toys, baubles, photographs, written notes, and painted pebbles. Items are left at the base of the trees or hung in their branches and are sometimes also placed on or around the Angel sculpture.
The spontaneous memorial is unusual in that it relates to many separate, unconnected, people and events, commemorating lost relatives both locally and overseas, including lost children and babies. It also differs from other spontaneous memorials in that it has arisen in response to a public sculpture.
Challenge
While the memorial acts as a communal expression of loss, it is also particularly personal. The project team therefore wanted to create a record of the memorial that was inspired by, and captured the spirit of, the tributes, without necessarily preserving the detail of individual messages and objects.
Approach
The project was a small-scale initiative, supported by a grant from the Catherine Cookson Foundation. The team created a sound archive of the memorial, which combined the stories of individuals who had left tributes at the Angel of the North site and field recordings of the memorial site across the seasons.
Initially, the team looked for people who had left tributes at the Angel to share their stories. Unlike many spontaneous memorials, there was no single event or location connecting the subject of the tributes, and no unified community of interest driving the creation of memorials, so a key issue was how to make contact with these people.
Working with the Newcastle University Press office, the team circulated calls for people to participate through social media, local and national media outlets, and by leaving flyers in local libraries and community spaces. The team considered leaving flyers at the memorial site, but they felt that this could have been experienced as intrusive by the people who were leaving tributes there.
The team used a two-stage permissions process for the conversations: initial consent was secured to make the recording, and an additional written agreement was secured after the recordings for the use of selected extracts in the sound piece. Participants were made aware of the context in which the extracts would be presented, and of where and how the sound piece would be made available. They also chose where they preferred the conversation to be recorded.
The team also made field recordings at the Angel of the North site over the course of a year, and they contacted Gateshead Council and the studio of sculptor Antony Gormley to ensure that key stakeholders were aware of the project before on-site recording commenced.
The interview extracts were edited together with the field recordings in a sound studio. Participants were invited to listen to the draft sound piece in the studio, together with friends or relatives if they wished, and their responses informed the final version of the work.
The sound piece was installed in a public venue on the campus of Newcastle University for a week, and the participants were informed of the dates in advance and again as soon as the piece went live. The project team offered to accompany participants if they wished to listen to the piece in that setting. Participants received a link to the sound piece so that they could listen in their own time and share with friends and family.
Intended aims
The team wanted to document the memorial for posterity in a way that was sensitive to its personal nature.
They aimed to devise a model for documenting spontaneous memorials that did not involve the collection of personal tributes. They envisaged that archiving a memorial through sound could act as an alternative and equally valid model for institutions to adopt. This model also has the potential for the sound piece to be used as the basis for site-specific audio installations, or for inclusion in exhibitions, archives or community activities.
Obstacles and issues
The Angel of the North is situated at the intersection of two very busy roads and recording on site at the memorial raised the challenge of traffic noise. While the team regarded traffic noise to be an important aspect of the memorial’s ambience, it could overwhelm other sounds, and some recording sessions were therefore timed for early morning when the traffic was calmer.
Even though communications about participating in the project were extensive and wide ranging, the team received a limited response. They did not have any initial contacts, who might have helped to build trust with individuals or act as a gatekeeper. Additionally, the individualised nature of the memorials meant that there was no existing community that the team could access.
The limited response meant that the diversity of stories in the sound piece was restricted; we had originally envisaged capturing a wider range of voices and experiences. The team received some responses from people who wanted to share their stories in writing but not be recorded. Building in an option for stories to be voiced by others would have enabled more people’s experiences to be represented in the sound piece.
Nevertheless, the small number of participants meant that the sound piece was able to focus on their stories in more depth, using a larger proportion of the recorded content than would have been possible if more people had been included. It was meaningful to the participants that their stories had been so fully represented in the work.
Actual outcomes and outputs
The key outcomes of the project so far have been:
- A 30-minute sound piece, Sounding the Angel, which is freely available online
- A week-long installation of the sound piece at a public venue on the campus of Newcastle University
- An accompanying blog which documents the project
- A public lecture at Newcastle University
- A conference presentation at the Spontaneous Memorials conference at Manchester University (June 2025)
Lessons learned
The limited response to the project indicates that it would have been beneficial for the team to have established contact with some of the people leaving tributes at the Angel of North site before work began. This would have had the further advantage of enabling the team to incorporate their views into the project design, thereby giving participants greater input into the process of documenting the memorial.
The project could have built in from the outset more flexibility in terms of how stories were told and collected, which would have meant that a greater diversity of experiences could have been represented.
Feedback from participants made clear that they regarded their participation in the project as a further act of memorialisation. While the research team had considered how the participants would receive the sound piece at the end of the project, the team could have given further thought as to how participants may be supported to share the sound piece with family and friends in a more private setting or with other participants.
With a better response to the project call, the team would have arranged an event for those people who wished to meet other participants. This seems particularly important in a context in which there is no existing community in relation to the memorial site. Participant feedback indicated that the opportunity to share their experiences with others in an informal setting would have been welcome.
Next steps
The team plan to approach local libraries and museums to explore whether the project could be referenced in relevant catalogues, exhibitions and archives to bring the sound piece to a wider audience.
Further information
Listen to the Sounding the Angel sound piece free of charge on David de la Haye’s Bandcamp site.
Read a Newcastle University blog about the project.
Read the project blog at Anne Whitehead’s Newcastle University webpage.
Watch the Newcastle University public lecture by Anne Whitehead and David de la Haye.