St Giles’ Cathedral has a vital history as the high church of Edinburgh, a focal point of community through the city’s history. From Friday 2 August to November, St Giles’ Cathedral has commissioned and will host 900 Voices, an immersive sound art installation exploring ideas of belonging, community and connection as part of the historic site’s 900th anniversary.

900 Voices, which is also part of this year’s Edinburgh International Festival, currently features around 220 hours of interviews with residents of the city aged from 3 to 93 speaking about what gives them a sense of belonging, connection and community.

Sound Artist Zoë Irvine, who worked with Public Artist and Designer Lindsay Perth and Composer and Sound Designer Jules Rawlinson to create 900 Voices, explained that the combinations which are selected and played together are unique and listeners never have the same experience twice.

These conversations have been added to a database which selects related key-words from people’s conversations and then plays extracts through 27 channels of sound the cathedral’s multi channel sound system.

“The way the installation works is using a bespoke computer programme that Jules has created that searches and sifts through all of the material and brings moments of conversations to the surface these relate to each other in different ways,” Zoë says. “If lots of people are using the word ‘nature’ there might be a moment when nature becomes the theme – it might be a child and an older person, any person, brought together by common themes.

“We were sound checking the other morning, when we we heard someone talking about the experience of being a single parent through one speaker, whilst through another speaker we heard a man talking about his sense of connection through being in a choir. That combination will never happen again, it shuffles all the time.”

At the moment around 270 people have taken part in the conversations but it is hoped that hundreds more interviews will be added up until the end of November.

The recordings took place in weekly sessions over several months at St Giles’ as well as across the city in libraries and community centres, with volunteer recordists receiving training on how to use equipment and ways to guide the conversation.

“We ask about belonging, and connection and community and people have really different ideas about what these things are,” Ms Irvine adds. “Quite early on just asking people about those terms was incredibly rich. There are things people have in common but also many things which are individual.

Recorded conversations to date have generally been between 20 minutes and hours though 45 minutes turns out to be the natural 900 Voices conversation length. Some conversations have been 10 minutes, there’s one conversation that lasted 3 hours.

“We have a basic structure but what we have tried to be is good listeners, to be curious and empathetic.” says Ms Irvine. “People have talked about really difficult things too – about recovering from alcoholism, health challenges, about racism, about prejudice – because in order to talk about belonging people have sometimes had to talk about not belonging.”

Asked about the uniqueness of the Church of Scotland building as a space, Ms Irvine explains that the entire project is built around the layout, acoustics and technical equipment of the site.

“The space of the cathedral is completely integral and the installation has been designed technically and aesthetically for St Giles’. Cathedral architecture is an incredible amplifier.”

Described as a “unique and exciting opportunity”, Ms Irvine credits a large grant from Creative Scotland for making the commission for St Giles’.

“To be able to do it thoroughly, to be able to do it well has been amazing,” she says. “We’ve got hundreds of hours of recordings. The installation aims to immerse listeners in these voices, rather than a linear listening, which with so many hours would be overwhelming. In this way too a depth of engagement with the themes is more possible. 

“Hopefully we’ll get a real sense of something about Edinburgh – what our community is, what we are part of.

Sarah Phemister, who is the cathedral’s head of heritage and culture, said:

“We are delighted that the voices and stories of the people of Edinburgh are going to form a central part of the legacy of St Giles' during our 900th year.

“The 900 Voices project's key themes of connection, community and belonging are so important to explore in today's society and central to our mission to be an open and inclusive space for all.”

Rev Dr George Whyte, who is the interim moderator of St Giles’, said: "For 900 years the voices of so many people have echoed round the walls of the Cathedral. It is entirely fitting that as we pass this milestone we hear each other talk about the things which matter to us and which we hold in common."

Visit 900 Voices

Details of how to visit the installation during the International Festival can be found at on the EIF website. On August 25th Edinburgh International Book Festival is also hosting an event with the 900 Voices artists titled ‘900 Voices: Conversations on Belonging’.