Online Event

Songwriter and performer Louise Jordan has spent 18 months engaging audiences with her ‘Pop-Up Pedestal’ in order to better understand audiences’ experience of temporary monuments.

During this event, Louise will outline her practise by focussing on 3 community workshops supported with funding from the Brigstow Institute Ideas Exchange Fund. Louise will reflect on audience interaction and engagement with live performance and consider ways that audiences might be involved in discussions around the presentation of our shared cultural heritage.

There will be time for questions from the audience to be chaired by Dr Sumita Mukherjee. The event will be introduced by Professor Tim Cole.

Speaker biography

Louise Jordan is a songwriter, performer and theatre producer with an MA in Human Rights who is interested in sharing hidden stories to broaden and challenge existing narratives. Through her work, Louise aims to challenge and engage audiences, asking who creates & curates our shared cultural heritage.

Louise has twelve years’ experience touring the UK & Europe sharing work in libraries, museums, arts centres, schools, care homes, with rural touring schemes and at festivals. Louise has released seven recordings and her songs have been played on BBC Radio 2 & BBC Radio 4.

Louise’s theatre productions include ‘No Petticoats Here: extraordinary women of the First World War’ (2016), ‘The Hard Way: the story of working class suffragette Hannah Mitchell’ (2018) and ‘Florence: the lesser known life and legacy of Miss Nightingale’ (2019). The Pop-Up Pedestal was conceived as a street theatre performance during lockdown in 2020 and has since toured to both outdoor and indoor venues and festivals across England.

“an arresting album and an important historical document” Songlines

“the diligence of a scholar and the heart of an artist …It is in responses like this set of songs that our collective cultural memories are kept alive” R2 Magazine

Commissions to write about women’s history include: Dreadnought South West 2019; UK Parliament 2018; Groninger Museum Netherlands 2016.Louise has shared her work with academics & heritage professionals e.g. Women & Power Conference, National Trust & University of Oxford 2019; Women’s History Network 2018. A qualified secondary teacher & Music Leader (currently resident composer at Wiltshire Music Connect) Louise supports young musicians including to write about hidden histories.

This event is organised by the Brigstow Institute with additional thanks to Arts Council England for funding.