Parade is a multi-media installation that presents a new and unique view of Maindee, featuring the people themselves.

Parade involves special performances of the work in Maindee Library, alongside the launch of this specially designed online portal featuring individual portraits, that highlight the personal histories, opinions, and issues that matter to the people of Maindee, in their own words. These sound-portraits will, I hope, convey something of what it means to live here in a new and revealing way, giving a platform for the people to speak; those who live, study, work, volunteer, and worship here.

The history of Maindee can be traced in the transformation of it’s buildings: in the change of their usage and function, their fall into disuse, or in their being demolished completely, and replaced with the new. But if we look more closely at this change, a picture emerges of the population over time. Also, what constitutes Maindee seems unclear; ask two people where its boundaries are, and you’ll get two different answers! Perhaps then, it can’t be thought of as a Geographical area, but rather as an attitude, a way of looking at the World. “Proper Maindee” is perhaps defined more by the people and their openness. It is in this sense of community that the truth, or truths might be revealed to us.

The parade of time is personified by an anonymous narrator, who we hear throughout the main installation. He guides us through the geographical changes to the area over the Centuries. But as time passes, we begin to hear the true voices emerging and interrupting our narrator in a new, contemporary parade. They tell us, and remind us of what it actually means to live here now, today, whilst the slowly emerging cacophony of its sounds swirl and build in an immersive journey.

This ‘sonic cartography’, or sound map, is a response to what I have discovered during my time here, namely, its uniqueness. By blending the diverse collaged voices and sounds I have attempted to reveal something of what makes this part of the City of Newport different, and a sense of what it means to live in Urban Wales in 2019. It is a new, contemporary, monument for the people of the people of Maindee, by the people of Maindee.