The Composing Department - Sound and Printing workshop with Richy Carey

In the early days of newspaper printing, the Composing Department would design every page using individual letter press blocks. These composers would use composing sticks to pack these letters into words, to then be packed into sentences, to be packed into pages. Each page arranged to suit the composer’s eye with a future reader in mind. Their work was an important precursor to what would become the field of Graphic Design.

In this workshop to accompany our Graphic Design exhibition Got the Message?, we will playfully create our own Composing Department for the evening.

We will work with composer and Art Night artist Richy Carey to explore the sounds of the Lamb Gallery and the surrounding area, using field recorders (portable microphones) to explore the space with our ears to uncover sounds we would never have imagined being there. After finding a palette of sounds to compose with, we will then use letterpress blocks to print out our own graphic scores, turning sound into words, words into images, to notate something of the sounds we discovered singing in the rooms around us.

Capacity is limited to 10 people. The workshop will involve moving around the gallery and the surrounding area, as well as working with printing ink. Suitable for adults and older children (the latter must be accompanied by an adult).