Simon Bradley is Programme Leader of the MA Music and the Environment and is based in North Uist in the Western Isles working for Lews Castle College UHI. As a musician he has worked in the Irish, Scottish and Asturian folk traditions and performs with group Llan de Cubel promoting Asturian culture around the world. A new recording was released in 2019. He also has professional experience and qualifications in earth science, transportation design and management, rural sustainability, and community development.
When the reality of lockdown dawned in late March 2020, it seemed that a process of adaptation would be required to develop resilience to the challenging circumstances into which we were all thrust. We would be staying put in a shrunken world unable to socialise freely and encouraged to view any personal interactions in the physical realm with caution and even suspicion.
My own response was to build a polytunnel. While our social life withered on the vine, I would create an environment to foster and facilitate another kind of growth. This bubble would provide, I hoped, a sense of control and efficacy that had been suddenly removed from many other areas of life.
This growing machine has by now already provided a welcome focus not to mention edible greens. So, in my role as programme leader of an online Music MA, I became interested in the possibility of building a virtual polytunnel, a digital bubble, where ideas, music and artistic practice could perhaps flourish despite the harsh COVID-19 climate cowing us into our respective individual corners.
Providing a digital environment for the nurturing of creative ideas can be further illustrated by the concept of Multiple Edges in Graph Theory. This enables us to visualise multiple routes to connect two adjacent destinations. These multiple edges (routes) connect two vertices/nodes (destinations) thus creating alternatives and possibilities.
This blog shares the multiple creative responses, or edges, of students and alumni on the MA Music and the Environment, generated from their digital ‘polytunnel,’ and created to mitigate some of the ‘harsh winds’ of the pandemic restrictions. In joining together and sharing varied perspectives we sought to update our understanding and critical thinking through a collective creativity.
Both alumni and current students have been welcomed in the digital polytunnel where an organic and self-generating creative environment is encouraged. Unlike the coursework and assessments that had initially brought the grouping together, there would be no rubric – just music and communication for its own sake.
A platform was secured and initial forays into opening a dialogue drew upon wide ranging topics including Luig Russolo’s 1913 futurist manifesto for music (L’arte dei Rumori).
Liberated from formal structure, a (digital) social, post-lecture coffee environment was encouraged, and creativity and experimentation were welcomed. As a cohort we were already equipped and well versed in the means to collaborate musically at a distance, and you can hear some of the composition games produced here: Remote Music Collaboration Game by uta | Free Listening on SoundCloud
The Edge blog has been wonderfully wide ranging in scope and content, and it is in this spirit that the following perspectives are added to the ‘multiple edges’ that have preceded them. I hope you enjoy them!
We welcome article submissions on a rolling basis. If you would like to contribute an article to The Edge, please contact joanna.rodgers@uhi.ac.uk
Find out more about The Edge programme – featuring seminars, images, articles & a conference on our website.
Enchantment and Wonder 