About the 900 VOICES Team
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Zoë Irvine : 900 Voices Creative Director
Zoë is an artist and sound designer who lives and works in Edinburgh.
She came up with the idea for 900 Voices for St Giles’ Cathedral’s momentous 900th Anniversary celebrations and brought the team together to work on this participative sound work, which has many moving parts!
The idea for 900 Voices grew from a love of recorded conversation which has been a thread through Zoë’s work ever since she learned to record and edit sound on tape working for Audio Arts Magazine as an art student.
Since that time, she has gone on to create many projects including large scale participative works such as This Evenings Performance Has Not been Cancelled, Magnetic Migration Music and DIAL-A-DIVA along with many smaller scale sound pieces and film works. Collaboration is key to many her works and she is 50% of artist collaboration IRVINE & SPENCE with Pernille Spence.
Zoë is also a sound designer working in film, tv and radio and Lecturer in Sound for Film at Edinburgh Napier/ Screen Academy Scotland.
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For 900 Voices, Lindsay is wearing a few hats .. she is working on 900 Voices design and graphic content for both web and print and social media.
Lindsay is also building the public engagement strategy, developing ways we are engaging people, communities - and their voices! - from across Edinburgh to 900 Voices.
Lindsay is a Public Artist & Designer:
https://lippi.org/
https://www.instagram.com/lindsayperth.artchunks -
Jules is working with Zoë on the sound design and composition of 900 voices, creating the generative sound systems that will weave the recorded conversations across across and through the cathedral in engaging and transformative ways.
Jules is an audiovisual composer, improviser and designer working with electronic sound, digital visuals and interactive technologies in solo and collaborative settings. He is Programme Director for Sound Design at Edinburgh College of Art in the University of Edinburgh.
Jules' recent work makes innovative use of archival visual and sonic material, and explores the role of form in non-linear and interactive experiences by considering issues of space and scale.
https://www.pixelmechanics.com/
St Giles’ 900 Collaborative Leads
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Sarah is Head of Heritage and Culture at St. Giles’ Cathedral
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Consultant to St Giles’ 900 Committee
Mary Miller began her career as a concert violinist, with the privilege of working internationally with some of the great names of our time. She developed a strong interest in building participatory music theatre projects, working with composers, professional artists and the community, before becoming Chief Music Critic for Scotland´s national newspaper, The Scotsman. While working as a journalist, she produced and presented many programmes for BBC radio and television, and also directed the UK´s premier festival of Nordic Culture, based in Northern Scotland, giving countless young Nordic artists their UK debuts, and building projects between international artists and remote northern communities.
In 1998, she became Head of the Studio at English National Opera, developing new opera, singers and creative teams, before moving to the USA to direct The International Festival of Arts & Ideas, one of East Coast America´s most prestigious and comprehensive festivals. Based in one of the US´s most ethnically fractured cities, the festival combined international excellence in both performance and debate with major participatory all-city projects.
In 2004, she became Director of Stavanger2008, European Capital of Culture, Norway´s biggest ever cultural programme comprising over 1000 events and projects, and building lasting partnerships between Nordic and European artists. In 2009, she directed the city of Sandnes´s jubilee celebrations, and also directed and wrote the Spanish city of Burgos´s bid to become European Capital of Culture.
In 2010, she became General and Artistic Director of Bergen National Opera, a dynamic young company which is now firmly established as one of Europe´s most flexible and innovative performing organisations with a programme which embraces a wide repertoire, singer and artist development, international collaboration and education.
She continues to work internationally as a speaker and mentor on cultural policy and is the only Norway-based member of the European Cultural Parliament.
Production Team
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Becky is 900 Voices Assistant Producer. Becky too has several hats - she works as a project manager for art installations and exhibitions
She has a reproduction photography business focusing on high-quality and archival documentation for artists, illustrators, galleries, publishers and private collections.
Becky is also an artist herself, whose photography practice is engaged with the environment and our performance within it.
Rebecca Milling Artist
https://www.rebeccamilling.com
Copystand Artwork Photography
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Claire McNicol is a storyteller, singer and workshop facilitator. She was lucky to learn from the Traveller Duncan Williamson, who taught her that ‘the greatest storytellers are the greatest listeners’.
Claire is delighted to play a part in realizing the vision of 900 Voices by gathering the stories of old and young alike. For Emily(4) Belonging means “Mummy, Daddy and my Teddies”. Helen (80) remembers tenement life in Leith, amongst the whaling community where every family had a carved whales tooth and the Clydesdale Horses from the Cleansing Department were stabled in the street.
Claire has a background in social work and worked in the voluntary sector with children and families for 30 years. This work included projects in Cornton Vale Prison and a Scottish Government initiative in South Lanarkshire with looked after children living in residential homes.
In recent years Claire has worked with the National Library of Scotland, Holyrood Palace, The National Galleries and the Festival Theatre delivering storytelling and singing workshops for children and their families.
In 2023 she was awarded a Scottish Book Trust Residency to work with the Donaldson’s Trust developing storytelling and creative writing skills with neuro- divergent young people.
Gather Round an intergenerational storytelling project with Capital Theatres brought together children from Hope Cottage and attendees of the Meeting Place in Currie over four sessions in 2022/23. Claire facilitated these sessions catalyzing joyful connections, which led one participant to remark, “It feels like a family”.
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Jennifer Is working for 900 Voices as our Engagement Assistant. She is assisting with the facilitation of community events and recordings.
Jennifer Souter is a documentary filmmaker based in Edinburgh. She has worked on a range of socially focused productions in an editorial and directorial capacity. Her film ‘Made in North Edinburgh’, which chronicled the return of their community festival, was made in partnership with The Guardian and was released in 2022. In addition to her work on 900 Voices, she is currently embarking on a PhD research project investigating the archive of films created by Pilton Video/Screen Education Edinburgh.
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Petros has been working with Zoë for many years in various fields and is the Technical Consultant for the 900 Voices sound installation in St Giles’. The journey to knowing that the 900 Voices would work from a tech perspective involved unlocking the potential of the PA system in the Cathedral and using it in a completely different way. Working with St Giles’ Chief Steward John, we were able to do everything we needed to give life to this project.
Petros is a Sound Engineer & Designer for Film and TV with a very technical background. His professional career includes a wide range of experiences in the field, i.e. from designing and installing studios to post-production editing and mixing.
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Anne-Marie, an Edinburgh-based sound designer and filmmaker, is a fellow lover of the arts. She joined 900 Voices as Sound Production Support, and has been bustling with excitement ever since.
Having graduated from Edinburgh Napier University, Anne-Marie has delved into freelance work on various short film projects. Notably, "Maid Mother Crone" stands as a pride and joy, enabling her to craft narratives through sounds of nature and symphony of voices. She finds immense fulfillment in constructing soundscapes akin to intricate jigsaw puzzles for the ears.
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Joseph is a Glasgow based sound designer primarily working in music and film. Having graduated from Edinburgh Napier’s Film course in 2022, he has continued to expand his creative output within sound, to encompass theatre, live performance and installation. He is passionate about community arts projects.
As an Edinburgh native now living away, he is looking forward to the opportunity, through this project, to reflect on his own experiences of community within the city.