We’ve done a thing! We’re quite excited by this one, not going to lie.

The headline is that we have a brand new project – Transmissions. Thanks to funding and support from The Royal Society of Literature, Arts Council England, WORD! Poetry and Leicester Creative Hubs Depot – we will be launching the project this month!

What is it?

We’ve worked with WORD! Poetry to develop relationships with eight new writers and poets based in the East Midlands (our local region) who have never been published before, either through being early-career artists or self-identifying as facing some kind of barrier to accessing creativity in the UK.

Over this next month, we’ll be working with these writers at The Leicester Creative Hubs Depot to record audio soundscapes and immersive layers using their work. We’ll use our own studio that we create to both deliver workshops on using sound in live performance, as well as offering open space for the artists to experiment, record, re-record and do what they do best.

Then we’ll be mixing it all together to create – Transmissions 1 – a digital, free to access anthology of work celebrating the incredible skills of these artists. Transmissions will be available here and on our social media (don’t worry we’ll be shouting about it!)

What’s the Point?

A question that we often ask ourselves in our rooms at 2am – but equally a very fair one.

Transmissions is about translating space and experience through sound. The question of objectivity is a discussion that we tear apart in modern discourse. Lived experience, bias, therapy spaces, trauma spaces, burnout – the list goes on.

The present feels un-definable, so how do we speak about experience? How do we speak about something as simple as space?

As you may know if you’ve followed us for a while, we have a strong bias for abstract and unique voices and styles. Abstraction, for us, isn’t about making something complicated but the opposite – making something as simple as it can be. The abstract is one of the most accessible forms of art, because it brings expression down to simple elements which can be layered according to the artist, the space, the team.

The abstract is collaborative, and empowering.

So we wanted to encourage artists to use a fundamental, visceral element like sound that they have no experience with – and to encourage them to use it to it’s full potential. They may not use it again, but we wanted to offer the very very rare commodity of space. Space to explore and develop.

Sound good?

If you like the sound of what we’re doing with Transmissions, then you can support it! Anything as simple as sharing it around on your socials or leaving comments and feedback – all of it helps us to develop more projects like this and is invaluable to us as an independent collective.

In fact, developing projects like this is the plan.

A fundamental thing we wanted to achieve is to be offering paid writing opportunities – and it’s an amazing feeling that Transmissions is our very first, paid opportunity for the artists taking part.

If we can show the need for opportunities like this for new writing and artists, then we can all be more and more ambitious with what comes next.

So, keep an eye out for now. We’ll be working with artists through September and providing updates all along the way. If you have questions, want to know more or want to find any other way to be involved with what we’re doing – then reach out!

You can get us at stghostycreatives@gmail.com or on any of our social media.

Thank you!