Alinah Azadeh Turns Personal Questions into Collaborative Creative Projects

Written By All The Elements
We Hear You Now launch walk - photo © Bip Mistry courtesy of Alinah Azadeh

We Hear You Now launch walk - photo by Bip Mistry and courtesy of Alinah Azadeh.

Alinah Azadeh describes herself as an artist, a writer, a wanderer, a cultural activist, a mother and a human being. “I'm also a creative facilitator,” she says, “and I coach people in the cultural sector as well”.

One of the projects that brought Alinah to our attention is a great example of that creative facilitation. We Hear You Now is an audiowalk where you can listen to the voices of Sussex-based writers and poets from global majority backgrounds. One of the main fruits of Alinah’s three-year writer’s residency for the South Downs National Park Authority at Seven Sisters Country Park, there are sixteen tracks that can be listened to online or experienced in the landscape of the Sussex Heritage Coast via QR codes and NFC tags placed on benches, signposts and gates.

ATE team member Sarah Groves sat down with Alinah to chat about We Hear You Now, the unforeseen challenges and benefits of the project, and to ask for some tips for our community members who want to collaborate with public bodies like National Parks.

This article is itself a collaborative piece based on Sarah and Alinah’s conversation, and features a mixture of transcribed audio, writing from Sarah Groves and Francesca Turauskis, additional edits and resources from Alinah, and edits from Frankie Dewar and Soraya Abdel-Hadi. 

We Hear You Now is created by women and non-binary people from black and global majority backgrounds, and it is rooted in the chalk landscape of the Sussex Heritage Coast. It explores themes such as climate change, personal migration, legacies of empire and a sense of belonging and connection to the land – themes that Alinah was personally exploring in her own writing as part of research back in 2019.

“I was reflecting on that coastline as a border post-Brexit – as a rapidly changing space because of climate change and the cliffs falling away, but also as a place of human arrival and departure, and as a place where I wasn't sure I belonged. I found that the rise of hostile environment policies shook me up and there were many questions coming up for me around this.

I visit Birling Gap beach a lot for personal reasons and I was inspired to write a magical realist story that imagines a girl of migrant heritage listening to the cliffs, and the cliffs responding with many voices and stories. This story contained a vision for what would later become a three year project, where – eventually – when you went out walking along the chalk, stories and voices from a very wide, global lens would be accessible, the stories would rise up from the ground to meet you”.

That story is the prologue story of We Hear You Now and off the back of it, Alinah was given the role of inaugural writer-in-residence at Seven Sisters Country Park and along the Sussex Heritage Coast. She had developed a plan to walk and write with other women and non-binary creatives of global heritage backgrounds during an Arts Council funded artist research period – the Seven Sisters residency then allowed her the space to cast a wider lens on the history, the topography and the potential future of Sussex Heritage Coast landscape.

However, whilst most residencies are solo endeavours, Alinah didn’t want to do that work on her own.

“I really wanted to bring in other creatives who were asking similar questions around land and belonging – or would maybe be inspired by that sublime chalk landscape like I was – to come and be together in solidarity, joy and refuge. Because I used to be quite afraid to walk out on my own, even on the Downs. I wanted company, yes, but I also wanted a creative dialogue, kinship and to make space for voices alongside my own. So I used the residency to grow a cohort of creatives from those global majority backgrounds, starting with a core of writers from Writing Our Legacy, a brilliant arts and heritage organisation who produced the retreats with me and whom I still work with.”

Podcast cover art: The Colour of Chalk, Reflections and conversations from the South Downs National Park hosted by Alinah Azadeh

Alinah created the outdoor walk and talk podcast The Colour of Chalk with three of those writers during her first residency year. Then, the We Hear You Now audiowalk grew out of We See You Now (a wider, two-year project supported through a major project grant by Arts Council England) and is a journey of poetry, myth and story created by Alinah in collaboration with ten other writers – Georgina Aboud, Jenny Arach, Razia Aziz, Joyoti Grech Cato, Oluwafemi Hughes, Dulani Kulasinghe, Georgina Parke and Akila Richards, Pauline Rutter and Sheila Auguste.

“Some of the work is written in the speculative fiction genre, which serves well the idea of re-imagining a place and especially imagining into the future. There's a strong colonial history along that coast, which is reflected in some of our stories (for example with the presence of the Commonwealth soldiers, global climate justice connections explored via the shipwrecks, the presence of the Victorians and the impact of the industrial revolution on the Cuckmere valley) alongside the elements of landscape itself becoming ‘restoried’ through new myth and powerful poetry.

I found that encouraging others to write ‘the global imaginary’ and dive into the poetic was a brilliant way of liberating ourselves from old arguments about ‘whose’ history, and ‘whose’ space this is. It was a way of both reclaiming and offering up new perspectives on the landscape, and who we are or could be in relation to it.”

With such a big project, it’s not surprising that Alinah says We Hear You Now had a big effect on her personally, and helped her to realise new things about herself, her creative work and her relationship to being outdoors.

“I realised I work best when being led by the landscape itself – and I wanted to share this. It’s like having a two way relationship with the landscape as I move or sit, because it definitely wasn’t just me having ideas. Some images and words were emerging as I/we walked and wrote. It was a three-way collaboration!

I learned I'm happiest when I'm outside; mental health wise, creative health wise – it is the place for me to be. I think it's given me a lifelong grounding in my relationship with the landscape, but also on my future creative path and the new body of work that I will do next, which will also involve walking at the edge of land and sea. That gives me a confidence, because I initiated and led something quite substantial and I am building on that now…”

Listening to Alinah, it seems like it wasn’t just the chance to be creative and outdoors that taught Alinah so much. Facilitating the other writers was all part of her learning process.

“Originally I was due to present seven of my own stories or poems, commissioned and installed in the landscape from my residency… but I explained to the National Park there needed to be a multiplicity of voices alongside my own in the final audiowalk, because we were decolonising the landscape, which has to be a collective act. I realised the power of that, the power of the collective in those spaces and how that fed me, fed us – as a group. And I have made lifelong friends from this too.

What would I say was challenging? I had underestimated what can be triggered in people by engaging creatively with some of the themes of landscape. Because actually, when I think about nature writing, I encompass humans within that – we are writing ‘the more-than-human’ as Robin Wall Kimmerer calls this. So some of us were bringing strong elements of our personal stories and weaving them in. Even if it’s fictionalised, with historical elements, we were really investing ourselves emotionally in the writing. I underestimated the fragility that can come up around writing about and in a space you may not feel, or have felt, ‘belonging’ in.

And it was a tender time during and post-Covid, Black Lives Matter and the financial crises – there was the emotional load of that. Much care is needed both if you lead and take part in such a process. There was great mutual support in the group as we used the writing and sharing process to reclaim our narratives within that landscape and to stay connected in our project writing groups.”

Working with the South Downs National Park Authority was also part of a learning process, and Alinah shared some advice for others who want to do a project with a similar organisation.

“The partnership, and especially working closely with Anooshka Rawden (the Cultural Heritage Lead for South Downs National Park Authority) provided legitimised space and brilliant support in bringing in my own ideas on how to slowly build and evolve the project, to allow for new work to be made and eventually installed. This residency was the first of its kind in that area and the resources and funds I received were a crucial factor in enabling it to happen (see acknowledgements below).

There is an ongoing process of assessment throughout – The National Park and Writing Our Legacy reviewed and developed their access offer in response to the needs of some of the participants, because much of this landscape in which the work is set is not easy to access if you are disabled. We all learnt a lot.

I do think that there are now many people within the National Parks network who are really up for this kind of complex but impactful work and are working directly with artists to generate new projects. (Nature Calling is a great example of a live project in that vein). To make my residency happen, I didn’t respond to an advert – the idea evolved in dialogue with the National Park. So I would say, identify potential allies, partners, people or communities who could be on board and start having conversations, which is when you can start growing your vision and making it real.

Also ask yourself, what are the priorities of the organisation you want to work with? For example, if you're thinking about doing a project that's inspired by a particular aspect of the landscape and you know that there's some work being done around that – whether it's a renaturing project or there is a particular bit of overlooked history that they haven't explored – then you can start to have conversations with those connections.

I do think this kind of work is a national priority now; creating these spaces that are open to all and using stories like ours as a kind of ‘welcome’. As well as climate change and the connection with nature and mental health. I think partnerships, allies and community is so important and not just feeling you are doing it on your own.”

Alinah at Sarcen Stone, Seven Sisters Country Park. Photo by Bip Mistry, courtesy Alinah Azadeh.

Having the space to bring people together and create something whilst being outdoors, as opposed to bringing people together for a walk, can change the way you then perceive the landscape and your place in it, Alinah said.

“On the retreats that we ran as part of the project, my approach was to slow the pace right down and take the paths least travelled. I loved finding stopping points and asking specific questions or offering creative prompts to the writers to think about specific details of what was around them. I'm not a fast walker or hiker, I like to go slow. I like to switch on a sense. For example, I would get people to just listen, or just look or just use one sense at a time. Then we would stop, and write something. I would often invite people to move in silence for certain parts.

I have noticed people walk right past elements of the landscape on certain routes, and I would invite them to pause as I told a story right there – ‘here there was an abandoned village wiped out in the Plague. You wouldn't know it because it just looks like a slightly raised hill, but all these things happened, so we're going to stop here. We're going to look, listen and then just be – and then we are going to write…’”

Using retreats and workshops as part of the project to hold space, Alinah found that discussion prompts around racial social justice in relation to land and ownership gave people more confidence to get involved.

“At the end of this creative walking and writing experience, there was optional sharing with the group; to talk about their experiences, read out their writing drafts or share the meaning of an object they may have picked up. I learnt from and was moved by so much wisdom and creativity and the bonding these sessions created between us. Often I or others present would provide quite political prompts or thoughts, like the feelings around belonging or not belonging or seeing things through their own cultural lens and bringing this more strongly into the work. I think the stories and poetry bear witness to this in a powerful way”.

Alinah encouraged the people who took part in the project to feel confident to share the ideas behind their work once it became a public programme (after the Listening Posts launched). She points out that not everyone identifies as a writer or even as a creative person, and the project encourages others to join in the creative process.

“Many people involved in the programmes we ran together now identify more clearly as writers, but also we found that in using the metaphors of landscape, thinking about our origins, about edges, arrivals, departures, thinking about horizons, future, past, present moment… it gave us all a common point of focus, as people with ‘multiple belongings’, as one of my favourite authors Elif Shafak phrases it.

The writing walks were very relaxed but people got really into them because even the experience of just sitting out in a beautiful landscape and spending ten minutes pausing and writing together, was new to some participants. And actually because of the slower nature of the walks, or in the indoor workshops we did where walking was not an option, writers often had a very different, more meditative sense of the place they were in, as opposed to if we were out navigating, on a hike or just focused on getting from one point to another.”

Using audio to capture ideas of belonging, land, history, climate and future is something that Alinah is passionate about. When you listen to the work, there are personal reflections, but also historical stories that haven’t been told much (such as the battalions of the British West Indies Regiment based at Seaford in 1915) that become a new oral history.

“Dulani Kulansinghe had previously written a piece called Letters Home, which are imaginary letters home to a beloved about being stationed there. It became part of the collection and I think hearing that story when you're sitting on a bench up at Seaford gives a different experience from just a visual experience of the site itself.

I'm really into performing work and a lot of these pieces we performed or had performed at Festivals and events. Because I like to hear people in a space, the second best thing is to put the audio into the space of the landscape as a legacy. The performer’s not there, but it feels like it's the closest to cloning yourself and standing there all year long.

There's something quite intimate about walking with audio too. People can listen online but to walk and then it being referenced as you're walking, I really like that. I love getting people out there, if they can be out there. Using audio as a way of immersing themselves with the rest of their senses, there's something quite unique about that.

It's quite democratic too because it's all online and this gives access to those unable to be in or walk the landscape, and opens it up to global audiences. Hopefully that will inspire them to go there or to think about their closest place differently.”

There was the technical aspect of creating audio and podcasts as well. Not everyone who was part of the project had voiced or recorded their work before.

“I've written and presented work for radio before but for some people, it was a new experience and I loved that we were able to make that happen. Akila Richards, one of the writers commissioned and a brilliant poet-performer, supported us all in making the most of our voices and the performing of our work both live and on audio. To have the actual voice of the person who's written the work in the landscape, I think is really important – and all of the writers have amazing voices!”

Alinah Azadeh at Seven Sisters Country park, Summer 2019. Photo courtesy Alinah Azadeh by Lilliana Gibbs

We asked Alinah, if she could give our community members one piece of advice about bringing their own vision to life, whatever that vision might be, what would it be?

“I would say, write it down as clearly as you can and then start to share it with people that you really trust, who can inspire you and support you in growing it, and who might be able to help you do that. Make sure you surround yourself with people who can support you and think about who else you can work with to make that happen, because it doesn't really happen in isolation, particularly within landscapes, it’s so different from working with museums, galleries etc.

But also think about why? What purpose is this serving? What's the intention? Write down what the intention might be, even if you don't think you know it yet.

Asking the land to give you a few clues is always good too, so going on a walk – or just spending time in the landscape with a question in mind – ‘this is my vision, please give me some answers – at the end of this I find there's always something new offered back to me.”

What’s clear from learning more about We Hear You Now is not just how much Alinah and the writers got from the project, but how much it brought to people who might not have experienced the project’s themes without the collaboration.

“We had comments from people during the public programmes we ran encountering the work, saying that they’d never seen or heard the landscape from this perspective before and it got them thinking about their own relationship and background and how that has shaped their own experience of it”.

The impact is certainly strong, and to end we wanted to share a snippet from the Impact Statement written by Anooshka Rawden, Cultural Heritage Lead for the South Downs National Park Authority:

We Hear You Now may have ended as a project, but like a stone dropped in a pool of water, its ripples continue… This ripple is ongoing, as more people will discover the content in the landscape thanks to planned promotion in 2024, and thanks to its impact within National Park Authorities themselves, fostering conversations around artist/landscape partnerships and the potential for ongoing promotion of work emerging from innovative initiatives such as We Hear You Now.  

The project promoted some significant learning within the South Downs National Park Authority, and this is ongoing. As an organisation bound by Local Authority processes and procedures due to our governance and funding models, the project raised questions about how we can work more flexibly, how we are perceived externally, and how we can better make resources at our disposal, such as physical meeting spaces, digital and print communications, contacts and networks, available more widely when working collaboratively with creatives and communities. This has usefully created a more reflective space and internal reflective work around culture, audience, equity and solidarity, helping us mature in our approach to working with global majority communities and understanding the more insidious barriers to access that impact minoritised creatives, both in terms of access to landscape and access to opportunity within the culture and creative sector.

Thank you so much to Alinah for sharing her experiences with us. It feels especially poignant to be able to share and uplift this work following a targeted and racially-motivated attack on the audio trail in September 2024. The attack is not discussed here but you can find out more on Alinah’s Substack, and the response from South Downs National Park Authority which Alinah says “does not shy away from identifying the theft of our audio trail as racially-motivated and now a criminal case”.

 

Things you can do next…

 

Acknowledgments:

Alinah wanted to acknowledge the people and organisations who were involved in We Hear You Now and who have inspired her work:

  • We See You Now was a two-year programme of retreats and workshops set in the landscape, led by Alinah and with guest tutors such as the renowned speculative fiction novelist Leone Ross.

  • Alinah learned the approach to walking she used on the retreats (slowing the pace right down and taking the paths least travelled) from Razia Aziz and Anuja Sharma of Waytu on a 'Wanderings’ programme she was part of in the years leading up to her residency. Razia’s myth Valley of Dreams is part of the We Hear You Now series.

  • People with ‘multiple belongings’ was a phrase coined by one of Alinah’s favourite authors Elif Shafak.

  • Akila Richards, who was one of the writers commissioned, is also a poet-performer and supported all the writers in making the most of their voices and the performing of our work both live and on audio.

  • Alinah shared more information on the resources and funds she received for the project: “I received two major Arts Council grants together with match funding and substantial in-kind support from the South Downs National Park Authority, plus other commissioning and support from a whole array of cultural partners over three years. This resource enabled us to offer free We See You Now workshops, retreats, events, fund travel and access expenses, then offer paid commissions to twelve of the writers and ensure high quality recorded work for the We Hear You Now listening posts.”

  • Writing Our Legacy is an arts and heritage organisation who produced the retreats alongside Alinah. She works with them as Associate Artist for The National Trust’s Changing Chalk programme.

  • Alinah walked and talked with many rangers, archeologists, climate and biodiversity specialists and they all researched a lot of history as the project evolved. She says “it was a co-learning process (and still is..)”

  • On how she created the workshops and retreats: “Initially I drew on a collection of writing prompts I myself wrote out in the landscape, and which were added to by Leone Ross, who came to work with us on a three day retreat in May 2022”.

  • The final written body of We Hear You Now work was edited with help from writer Umi Sinha and others.

All The Elements
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