Warplands was commissioned by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Landscape and Environment Programme Director’s Impact Fellowship that runs throughout 2011.
 
Warplands draws together extracts from the published works of early topographers, antiquarians and visitors, dramas and poetic texts located in or referring to the area, regional archival and archaeological sources, environmental and planning reports, maps and photographs with passages of original writing, set in a specially created musical matrix. 
  

Warplands is informed by fieldwork and discussion at the AHRC Landscape and Environment Programme Impact Fellowship workshop ‘Performing Geographies’, held 5 Juen 2011 to 6 June 2011 in North Lincolnshire, which gathered performance scholars and practitioners, geographers and heritage and environment experts on site, and invited them to contribute their particular perceptions of, and potential approaches to, Ousefleet and Alkborough.

Warplands builds directly upon the approaches used by Mike Pearson and John Hardy in creating the AHRC Landscape and Environment programme-funded Carrlands audio work. Carrlands is available online; one section – Hibaldstow – was performed live at the Landscape and Environment Programme annual conference ‘Living Landscapes’ in June 2009 in Aberystwyth.

Warplands promotes the potential of performance: to generate new engagements with landscape; to offer new perspectives; to inform and shape narratives; and to facilitate public engagement with and appreciation of places ‘off the beaten track’.

Text: written and spoken by Mike Pearson

Pre-recorded soundtrack: composed and created by John Hardy, assisted by Rob Whitehead (with Trystan Hardy – cello; Sarah-Jayne Porsmoguer – cor anglais)
Live music: for cornetto, trumpet and percussion, composed and played by John Hardy

Video sequences: shot by Russell Basford and Louise Ritchie

Projection sequences: assembled by Russell Basford, with Mike Pearson

Sound engineer: Rob Whitehead