This event was the culmination of my Connect/Exchange residency at Stills Gallery in partnership with Northern Film + Media, also a sharing my research around Rough Music. This project took the historian E P Thompson’s essay ‘Rough Music’ as its starting point. Rough Music is a term that describes a number of folk rituals performed by working class communities from the 16th–19th centuries. These rowdy public processions were accompanied by discordant music performed on household implements. Rough Music was an opportunity for people to mock authority, openly flouting the law and social norms. My research expanded into explorations of crowd dynamics, contagious energy, and public noise as a productive force or form of acoustic punishment.
Whilst on residency at Stills Gallery I conducted a period of practice based research using 16mm filmmaking practices and analogue photography, to explore the materiality of film as analogous to the bodily boundaries within a crowd. I also spent time identifying key writing around crowd psychology, working class histories of protest and examples of the Rough Music vocabulary being used in the context of Scottish history and folk rituals.
The event at Summerhall featured a short presentation on my research and a sound workshop led by invited artists and musicians Julia Scott and Fritz Welch, who offered exercises and games to explore collective music and noise making. Playing with the untrained voice and body, and using instruments made from household objects, the workshop worked towards a preparation for protest and forming of a collective space of expression. This workshop was free and open to all, no musical or performance experience required. 
The event was supported by Stills Gallery, Edinburgh and Northern Film + Media, and the residency is funded by AHRC and Creative Scotland Funding.