Peace Amongst Thorns

This practice-based research investigates how site-responsive, multi-channel sound installations can transform high-transit civic infrastructure—or "non-places"—into sites of secular spiritual contemplation and historical reflection. Sited at Middlesbrough Rail Station along the historically significant Stockton and Darlington Railway line, the project addresses how the sonic heritage of early European Christianity can be recontextualized through contemporary community collaboration to cultivate a sustained sense of the numinous within modern transit architectures. Developed in partnership with TransPennine Express, Navigator North, and Middlesbrough Council, the work centers on the town's origins as a 12th-century Benedictine Cell on the River Tees. The research methodology combined deep historical inquiry with an active public co-creation process. The acoustic tapestry was built by tracking vocal elements with local town residents, collaborating with local choirs, and incorporating harmonized vocal recordings of the Monks of Ampleforth Abbey, which were then interwoven with original contributions from local musicians who reinterpreted traditional plainsong. Playing continuously during station operational hours, this carefully structured audio arrangement anchored the transient commuter space with a deeply rooted, intentional regional narrative within a sonic structure that occurred throughout the day according the monks liturgy of the hours. Peace Amongst Thorns advances public realm acoustic art by demonstrating that fixed, site-responsive ambient soundscapes can safely mitigate the stress and environmental exhaustion of high-transit environments. Helping to win a public art award, the output establishes a transferable protocol for integrating complex regional history, community co-creation, and ecclesiastical heritage into secular public infrastructure, successfully turning a busy transit hub into a deep space of localized reflection and collective wonder.