Sussex Retold: Sounds, Sites, Stories

Learn about the Sussex Retold project, which is helping to rethink regional arts, crafts, folklore and music through participation, partnership and performance.

A photo of someone’s feet dancing at a Locating Women in the Folk event

Image credit: Tunde Alabi-Hundeyin

About the project

The arts, crafts, music and folklore of Sussex speak to us about many people: land workers, townsfolk, farmers, shepherds, fishers, traders, migrants, makers, writers, story-tellers and singers. The Sussex Retold project explores ways to retell these stories from an inclusive perspective and reconsider where natural, cultural and regional heritages relate. Working with local cultural, council, and land organisations, we investigate how sounds, sites and stories can express how people have lived on and with the turf, chalk, cliffs and clouds of the region.

This project builds on a range of research projects across the University which explore the distinctive regional cultures of East and West Sussex and their local and global relationships. Through this, we hope to enhance local civic engagement and sustainable development in ways which benefit our partner organisations.

People
Read about the people involved in the project.
- Professor Margaretta Jolly (Principal Investigator)
  Margaretta Jolly’s research on the theory and practice of life narrative and oral history supports the vision and application of this project in the context of a longstanding interest in Sussex folk heritages. She has explored these as methods for public and community engagement and as tools for enhancing and evaluating use and impact.
- Dr Hope Wolf (Co-investigator)
  Hope Wolf’s extensive inquiry into the visual art and crafts cultures of Sussex forms a bedrock for the project. Wolf’s work focuses on place-making as vital determinants of identity and community, exploring how these dialectically support creative innovation. Especially significant is her challenge to conventional and pastoral stereotypes of Sussex culture.
- Dr Sam Carroll (Heritage Consultant and Project Manager)
  Sam Carroll is an oral historian, project manager, learning facilitator, and community heritage consultant with twenty years’ experience across a diverse range of projects in both community heritage and academic research. She is director of Sweet Thames: The London Folk Club Heritage Project. Star Creative Heritage (National Lottery Heritage Fund), 2022 – 2023.
- Professor Ed Hughes
  Ed Hughes’s work as a composer and researcher also underpins the project. Hughes’ compositions in and about the Sussex landscape and South Downs are springboards for thinking about the relationship between music, song, dance, environmental conservation and farming.
- Dr Chris Sandom
  From the Sussex Sustainability Research Programme, Chris Sandom brings expertise in rewilding and land management. Within the SSRP’s South Coast Sustainability theme, he has worked specifically on the issues, visions and futures of the downland in Sussex and especially within the City Downland Estate, owned by Brighton & Hove City Council.
- Dr Perpetua Kirby
  Perpetua Kirby, also within the Sussex Sustainability Research Programme, draws on educational philosophy to hone a practical approach to urgent sustainability challenges, including with school children and those involved in farming and land-use. Her 2023 Open Press book, Creating with Uncertainty: sustainability educational resources for a changing world, edited with Rebecca Webb was produced collaboratively including with Jo Walton and Michael Jonik.
- Dr Jo Walton
  Jo Walton works in climate communication, including through science fiction, serious games studies and other creative methods. With Chris Sandom, Perpetua Kirby and Dan Locke he has supported 24 Hours to Envision a Sustainable Future.
- Dr Laura Kounine
  Laura Kounine specialises in the history of witchcraft and lore. She focuses on gender, emotions, selfhood, crime and conflict and early modern witch trials. She also explores methods involving historical self-narratives and oral history.
- Dr Fiona Courage
  Fiona Courage, Director of the Mass Observation Archive, specialises in its uses in educational contexts, and also, as Deputy Director in the Library, will facilitate showcasing of heritage including the Copper Family papers in our Special Collections.
- Professor Ben Rogaly
  Ben Rogaly has extensively researched community development and regional identities with a particular interest in how participatory oral history methods can illuminate the interests of migrant and minority peoples. He also exposes the racial capitalism involved in agricultural work.
Other academics at Sussex with relevant interests include:
- Professor Alice Aldridge, who researches local and global landscapes through ecoacoustics
- Dr Karis Petty, who works on perception of the South Downs landscape for walkers who have impaired vision
- Dr Jamie Barnes, who explores ecological sensibilities and post-human perspectives including at Wakehurst Gardens.

Sussex Retold is supported by the Centre for Life History and Life Writing Research, the Sussex Centre for Modernist Studies and the South Coast Sustainability group within the Sussex Sustainability Research Programme.

We also acknowledge and thank our funder, the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Impact Acceleration Account (IAA).

We will be working under three headings from 2024-2026:

Diversifying Ditchling: Sharing new arts and crafts stories within and beyond the Guild

Ditchling Village and Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft showcases the artists and craftspeople who made Ditchling a creative hub in the 20th century, as well as contemporary practitioners whose work reverberates with their historic work. We are working with the museum to support its interests in community involvement, including through an oral history. This work draws specifically on Hope Wolf’s research and the oral historian is Sam Carroll.

Storying Downland cultural heritage

We are working with local partners to explore the Downland landscape and cultural history of the South Downs in ways which reflect multiple heritages and inclusive regional and national identities. The South Downs Songbook - a music and composition project in schools and colleges - with composers Ed Hughes, Evelyn Ficarra, Rowland Sutherland and Shirley J. Thompson – is an inspiration. Its album Distant Voices, New Worlds was ‘contemporary music album of the month’ in November 2024, reviewed as ‘English to its core’ yet defying tradition. Hope Wolf’s work with Towner in Eastbourne including a major exhibition in 2025, and her research on cultural geographies such as Beachy Head, are also vital.

Composing sustainable landscapes in the South Coast through film, folk song and farming heritage

This work brings together the interests of three partners: Sussex Traditions, Land Use Plus and Writing Our Legacy.

Sussex Traditions

The Sussex Traditions approach is described in Steve Roud’s assertion that “it is not the grand issues of life which worry us here – they can look after themselves – but the lives of the ordinary people which are often allowed to be forgotten” (“Who Cares About Tradition?”).

Land Use Plus

Land Use Plus is part of the Brighton & Hove Food Partnership. It aims to connect points of view from a wide range of people to create multiuse land. This land could provide food, spaces, opportunity for education and greater connectivity, whilst protecting and restoring nature. It is working with farmers, the council and others to improve food production practices that impact on climate change.

Writing Our Legacy/Changing Chalk

Changing Chalk is a National Trust led initiative that connects natural and cultural heritage to support Downland conservation. Changing Chalk has collaborated with Writing Our Legacy (WOL), a Brighton-based arts and heritage organisation. The WOL Changing Chalk programme was commissioned to “engage the general public and writers, creatives and audiences from the Black, Asian and ethnically diverse communities, connecting them to the unique chalk grassland of the Sussex Downs and the communities of the urban coastal fringe of Brighton & Hove, Lewes and Eastbourne, through literature, creative writing, storytelling and other arts and cultural activity.” They have supported (with others) “We Hear You Now: A spoken word audio journey around the Seven Sisters and Sussex Heritage Coast” with the South Downs National Park’s Writer-in-Residence Alinah Azadeh.

This work draws upon Jolly’s knowledge and networks, including the Centre for Life History and Life Writing Research’s conference Locating Women in the Folk. Sam Carroll and Laura Hockenhull are also key to these activities.