‘Sounds of Steel’, Loftus Arts, East Cleveland

29th Nov - 1st Dec, 2025

'Sounds of Steel’ exhibition, Loftus Arts, E Cleveland. November, 2025. We installed and hosted an interactive project exhibition over four days. Over 100 visitors attended and added their stories and ideas to the project. Sounds of Steel participants and collaborators visited to see the collected outputs of the project.

Our exhibition told a story of the project, with a particular focus on materials and recordings produced through the gong soundings at the site of the Redcar blast furnace remains and across several East Cleveland community groups. Some of the photographs were taken by young adult participants, one of whom who also helped to host the exhibition. A core element of the exhibition was a series of sound recordings, as below. These bring together some snippets from our discussions and interviews with participants, along with ambient sounds from our project sites. They give a sense of the enormously rich stories we gathered in our discussions with local people about history, place, connectedness and social change. We are indebted to our participants, and have their permissions for us to share the recordings below.