The “Our Gower” project, organised by with the Nature Conservation Team in the City and County of Swansea, involves more people than myself. There are Years 8 and 9 pupils from four different schools working with seven people from different organisations plus the school teachers to experience four of the wild outdoor environments of the Gower Peninsula in Wales.
Tim Orell from the Nature Conservation Team is working with Gower Unearthed, Nature Days, and plus writers Emily Hinshelwood and Helen Nicholas to give the pupils an outdoor experience they won’t forget. Carrying out different tasks in the natural environment, the pupils will also be writing about their walks and recording them, using mobile technology, in the form of photography, video, sound and text. They will be working back in school to process and develop their words and images with the project team to present them as an exhibition and videos that express their responses to the experience.
This weeks posts illustrate two of the environments visited – the salt marshes of the Burry Inlet and Loughor Estuary and the Gower upland of Cefn Bryn with a visit to “Arthur’s Stone”.
The images and sounds I have included about these walks are my own and will be made available to the pupils to use alongside their own material if they find them helpful.
Marsh Walk Soundscape
Cefn Bryn Walk Soundscape
When recording the sounds of the Cefn Bryn walk I initially thought my microphone had come loose in its cradle – it turned out to be the sound of multiple Wellington boots walking!
For those that are interested the photography was all done on my iPhone to be in keeping with the use of mobile technology on the project. The sound recordings I made, however, were done using my RODE NTG3 shotgun mic with a Blimp windshield and “dead cat” cover and my Fostex FR-2LE field recorder. The pupils used their mobile phones for sound recording but as these do not react well to wind, I thought it best to have some useful backup for post production workshops.