John Hall Artist

This site presents John Hall's recent solo and collaborative projects including books and text, video, soundworks, performances and other visual art work in Cumbria and across the north.

The work has involved traditional musicians, health groups, schools, DJs, broadcasters, actors, historians, and national and regional archives in creative examinations of locality.

John's work continues to provide overlapping spaces for individual and collaborative practice around community and locality through new partnerships with artists, schools, and community groups. His work as artist and Project Manager on "Soft Drive" and "Ritual Exchange" respectively explored the mediators of communal memory and celebrated vernacular creativity and ceremony.

John has pursued this interest in 2022 independently and collaboratively with Into The Music. Commissioned by the Arts Council's Barrow Full project in Barrow in Furness, and resulting in 6 30 min podcasts which were also broadcast on Resonance FM.

From a Pin To A Piano was a 2023 partnership project with Full Of Noises, Artfly and Barrow In Furness Dock Museum on the life and times of Duke Street, and the evocative power of objects, odours and sound.

John's short video "A Foxtrot" looks at the Barrow Public Hall through the eyes of a couple who danced there every week, .

Play Summat We Know , 2024, combines oral history with ephemera, contemporary accounts and Johns own writing to describe the atmosphere of creativity and activism in Barrows historic music scenes. With Artspace, John curated an Exhibition, Play One Of Your Own, opened at Barrow Dock Museum in February 2025. The next phase will see interpretive work delivered by a group of locally based artists,

Johns audio montage "FOLLIES OF 1933" was included in the 2023 Radiophrenia festival, and is on the Audio page.

"Still Waters" is a a collaborative audio/video study of the memory of land, water and people, in Askam In Furness with Artspace Cumbria.

His current EP "3 Dulcimer Tunes" and "I'll Be There" a book on home made and personalised record sleeves appeared in 2022.

John's 2020 film 'Horngarth' on the craft and logistics of the Whitby Penny Hedge Service featured in the Whitby and Furness Tradition folk festivals, and has been hosted by the Folklore Society. Other work on the Horngarth, including music and video, text and audio montage are on this site.

PLAY ONE OF YOUR OWN

Now the dust has settled after a night where I think most were a little overwhelmed and touched that the local scene was remembered in such a positive way I wanted to say well done.

As I said on Friday not only did you capture the DIY nature of the scene but you managed to capture an attitude that is peculiar to people who are (or feel they are) outsiders in what is all too often a very beige town.

That is no mean feat so congratulations on a really powerful and cleverly curated exhibition.

Congratulations on a brilliant show, i'll be back for more soon - so much moving content, important to be seen, and the perfect place for it. Your words will stay with me, it’s one of the most important industries that needs to be celebrated and kept alive

.Three Tides EP

"As ever, a gentle, thoughtful and wistful contribution to the Gently Feral movement."

Horngarth

" there's a great air of reassurance carried in your film. Perhaps it's the combination of Lol's rich voice and his steady pace recounting the why's and wherefores, unquestioning something that is and that will be..I hope Lol et al can make it happen next year.'

"A delightful and gentle film"

"An intriguing meditation on tradition. Really well put together." (28 Dales)

"Still Waters"

"Very evocative and engaging films, animation and beautiful photographs. Great to record the engagement with local communities..."

"...this is just delightful. It’s beautifully paced and gives a real sense of place."

"Serves Twelve"

".. a really lovely yet subtly disquieting piece."

(Radiophrenia Festival)

"Novemberism / Foregrounding"

I loved your video and music pieces, They were so touching - something about the richness of everyday experience - the river at the end of the road, the blazer on the back of the chair. something elegiac about them, too - the fleeting nature of those moments."

I saw and heard an evocation of our local hill. I watched a piece of film of George Butterworth and Cecil sharp dancing (a film I have personally watched many times) but saw it through very different eyes. I Heard the words of a poet from Dalton’s 19th Century industrial history singing out here and now. A dusty fragment of 60’s vinyl recording history fascinated us and turned into an imagined world of the dense ordinariness of making pop music in the form of a written story read to us in a dimly lit room.

All involving, evolving and experiential leading to a performance of sound effects, voices and vinyl. Could it be all the voices and writings from the past, the sounds of here and now all emerging from hundreds of record crates? All of this is moving and emerging and offering an insight into a year’s worth of thoughts, exploration and glimpses of the bones of bigger projects and pieces in development."

Gordon Jones EFDSS / Furness Tradition Festival

"Top innovative stuff, we need more of this"

(Seasoning Audience comment)

"Play Summat We Know. Independent Music and Community in Barrow in Furness 1976-96"

Snapshots of pop, community and activism in Barrow. Produced with Barrow Dock Museum and supported by the Westmorland and Furness Council Micro-to Mighty Heritage programme and the Eric Wright Trust, , it's a compilation of interviews, contemporary accounts, and ephemera including original drawings, posters, zines, photos, badges etc . Available at the Dock Museum or on the Merch page.

Now a major exhibition at Barrow Dock Museum.."Play One Of Your Own" runs to April 6.