How to be Held: Songs of Self-Soothing
Rhiannon Armstrong / Oily Cart / Polyglot Theatre
Information
Date: Thurs 25 Sept
Times: 4pm to 7pm
Tickets: This installation is free to attend (no booking required)
This is a drop-in event
This event takes place in person in our Lower Hall
How to be Held: Songs of Self-Soothing is an immersive, multi-sensory sound installation within a living landscape of over 300 plants, atmospheric light and surround-sound.
Settle on cushions and beanbags, feel as the world fades from day to night and back again, and be held by a sound world that breathes with you.
Choral harmonies, synth textures, natural soundscapes, and looped melodies flow through a 360-degree sonic environment. Each track responds to a real self-soothing hook, lyric or riff offered anonymously by the public, and re-imagined by artists across musical styles. Come and go as you like, or stay for the full three-hour cycle, which repeats like a lullaby or a phrase we hum to get ourselves through tough times.
Songs of Self-Soothing is a work-in-progress by nature: always evolving, always responsive to its surroundings. Originally commissioned by Wellcome Collection as a digital experience during the Covid-19 lockdowns, Liberty Festival marks the first time it can be experienced in person, as a site-specific installation within the set of When the World Turns, by the director of the show’s UK tour.
Taking Songs of Self-Soothing into the rustling, breathing environment created by Oily Cart (UK) and Polyglot Theatre (AUS) brings two worlds together and delves into chiming themes of care, reciprocity and eco-systems.
PART OF LIBERTY FESTIVAL 2025
Liberty Festival is the Mayor of London’s flagship disability arts festival, platforming some of the most exciting disabled creatives, showcasing bold, innovative work for free that excites, challenges and reframes disability for audiences across the capital and hosted in each London Borough of Culture.
Biographies
Rhiannon Armstrong
Rhiannon Armstrong is a transdisciplinary artist making works with empathy, interaction, and dialogue at their core, often for unfiltered audiences. Rhiannon’s work is known as radically inclusive with particular emphasis on care and public space, with works like The Slow GIF Movement and Public Selfcare System, presented in 2024 at ANTI Festival in Finland. Textile designs inspired by the latter can be seen as part of the Chill Out Space at Battersea Arts Centre, commissioned from Rhiannon in 2018. Words from her article about the piece, The Radical Act of Stopping, are currently on show at the V&A’s exhibition Design and Disability. Rhiannon was recipient of the Adrian Howells Award for Intimate Performance in 2019, Another Route International fellow 2022, and Horizon Residency Artist 2023. Rhiannon directed the current production of When the World Turns (also on as part of Liberty Festival 2025) and is currently developing The White Noise Factory, an experimental experiential work that privileges sensory meaning-making over intellectual meaning-making, and non-linguistic working practices.
‘Rhiannon is one of the most interesting and experimental artists I know. Her work makes me think, challenges my assumptions, alters my perspectives and is beautifully nuanced and exquisitely balanced’ Jo Verrent, Director of Unlimited
Access
PRE EVENT INFORMATION
This event takes place in person in our Lower Hall. This space is on the ground floor, with step-free access to the space.
EVENT INFORMATION
This event will be Relaxed. We invite you to make yourself comfortable and move around if you need to, and if you need to leave the space at any point you will be allowed to return to the space when you feel ready.