The Outsider

Rachel Emily Taylor worked with children from schools in Keighley and Haworth to explore ideas of a 'contemporary Heathcliff' for Emily Brontë's 200th Anniversary, funded by Arts Council England.

Children took part in creative workshops which allowed them to explore the landscape surrounding the Brontë Parsonage Museum. The children’s behaviour on Penistone Hill differed from that in the classroom, and reminded Taylor of Heathcliff and his relationship with the moors.

Taylor recorded the children reading the poems that they had written while in the landscape, and she shaped the recording into ‘clock chimes’ that ‘rang’ every fifteen minutes - acting as an interruption in the museum and playing on the idea that children should be seen and not heard. The sound was embedded in a walnut case, reminiscent of a mantlepiece clock.

The chimes sounded over a four hour period, echoing the length of time it took Lockwood to walk from Wuthering Heights to Thrushcross Grange. The chimes connected the routine of the contemporary classroom, Heathcliff’s harsh treatment and how the children felt on the moors.

• https://www.bronte.org.uk/whats-on/655/t...