This Landscape is Ours

IOU and Breaking Barriers Present a New Light and Sound Night Walk
5-8 February 2025

This Landscape is Ours is a community-led social history project that gathers stories from the people that call Calderdale their home, celebrating and shining a spotlight on the cherished, forgotten and remembered places that hold significance for Calderdale’s diverse people and communities

Over 6 months, IOU and Breaking Barriers met with people from across Calderdale, recording personal stories and weaving these with visual imagery, soundscapes and animation to create an immersive Light and Sound Night Walk for people to enjoy on their local streets.

Beyond this the project will continue to grow through the production of a new interactive map that collates all our collective stories and memories, charting our relationship to the many places and landscapes that make up Calderdale. The map will allow everyone a chance to place a cross and mark their own meaning to the places that are most important to them and create a legacy for what Calderdale means to all of us at this moment in time

Over four February nights, audiences experienced Calderdale in an entirely new light. Wearing headphones, they embarked on an immersive journey through the streets of Halifax.

Beginning at the Bus Station and culminating at The Piece Hall, along the route stories are brought to life through a stunning mix of projections, binaural audio recordings, archival photography, and video installations. This unique production offers a personal collective journey that redefines how we see and experience our environment and the places we call home.

From forgotten architecture to sweeping vistas, from old libraries and dancehalls to shuttered shops, Calderdale is filled with memories and hidden treasures waiting to be unearthed in this storytelling feast for the senses.

This Landscape is Ours is a key commission for CultureDale and represents a new partnership between IOU Creation Centre and Breaking Barriers

Born out of a desire to capture the unique relationship we have with our immediate landscape, the project transforms reflections on the places that mean the most to us into an audio walk with accompanying visual projections revealing the personal meanings behind the locations we encounter on a daily basis.

Using techniques and approaches that both organisations have cultivated on previous projects, such as Breaking Barrier’s Stories We Tell & IOU’s The Storytelling Bus, ‘This Landscape is Ours’ will be accompanied by an interactive digital map which will collect personal stories or reflections on the Calderdale landscape that means the most to people.

Over 6 months, IOU and Breaking Barriers met with people from across Calderdale, recording personal stories

More than 30 people who live and work in Calderdale met with us to record their stories in their own words and then some to be photographed in their ‘landscape’ This is a selection of those photographs by Ed Waring

About Breaking Barriers

Breaking Barriers is a Rochdale-based production company whose work is rooted in amplifying unheard voices and bringing ambitious work to local streets and people. We regularly work with communities and artists from a rich diversity of backgrounds and lived experiences, and like to tell stories in ambitious digital formats.

About IOU

IOU Creation Centre for contemporary art, engineering, and technology is based at Dean Clough Mills in Halifax. We support local and national artists providing opportunities to co-create and produce innovative ideas and artworks. Our interdisciplinary productions are presented at galleries, venues, festivals, and site-specific locations nationally.

'This piece encourages people to experience Calderdale through new eyes and invites people to witness ambitious work on their local doorstep, creating a love letter to the places and spaces that they call home'

Parvez Qadir, Artistic Director of Breaking Barriers

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