‘CHOIR’ INSIDE A PHONEBOX RANG TO HELP ISOLATED
35 volunteers recruited to provide city chorus
A PHONEBOX ‘choir’ rang out to help show isolated residents they are not alone.
Volunteers were recruited to call 35 pay phones across the six towns at the stroke of 6pm on Wednesday.
And if any passing member of the public picked up the receiver, they heard a unique soundscape created from people’s real-life stories.
The project was commissioned by B Arts and has involved artists working with Stoke-on-trent RVS Community Centre and its befriending and companionship service.
It has been inspired by local experiences during lockdown. Despite many of the coronavirus restrictions ending, there are still elderly and vulnerable people stuck at home self-isolating.
Artist Rachel Ferguson said: “We started to talk about what care means to us.
“We thought about conversations and how telephones have been so important during lockdown.
“You would have gone crazy if you couldn’t speak to your family on the phone.”
She and fellow artists Daniel Wiggins and Harry Jukes recorded conversations with some of the residents in the city who have been affected.
“We were ringing people who had signed up to the RVS’S befriending list.
“Some of them have been isolating since January or have family living far away,” added Rachel.
You can hear snippets of conversation and distorted noises on the soundscape.
For Wednesday’s chorus of phonebox calls, volunteers listened to these recordings as they dialed the phone numbers in unison.
The voices then travelled through the connecting wires.
The project team visited each phonebox earlier in the day to drop off a pack of personal protective equipment, including hand gel, bacterial wipes and a face mask.
They also wiped down each phone as a safety precaution, although they were advising anyone who answered the calls to wipe the phones again before picking up the receiver.
Each phonebox also had a message stuck to its interior, letting the public know more about the project.