The Whole World Sounded
Claire and Hannah responded to lead the student takeover for International Woman’s Day with similar aspirations, to explore taking over a space by creating an event and companion publication. Their hope is to maximise engagement by making International Women’s Day an opportunity to celebrate creativity and womanhood as a university family.
Claire and Hannah have asked a group of creatives to share work responding to women they feel were overlooked, under-represented or side-lined within the field of arts and humanities. Their compositions form The Whole World Sounded, a reading and performance event. Join us from 2pm for our reading event and drinks reception in Glasgow University Union's Reading Room.
Our selection of authors, performers and students have collated their anecdotes about their chosen creatives in a limited-edition print. Contributors include: Ellie Beaton, Louise Holland, Mridula Sharma, Jing Ye, Gillebride MacMillan, Sumayya Usmani, and Stephen Forcer.
Following our special event held on International Women's Day, this print will be available online and as a physical publication. There will also be a static display featuring the contributors and their muses.
Whilst working with the contributors to compile the companion publication, Claire and Hannah have given time and consideration to showcase the artistry of the women being reflected upon, and the creativity of the voices responding to them.
Their Instagram page @thewholeworldsounded allows them to showcase the project on a larger platform, and they will be posting extracts from the publication and footage from the event and static display.
The name of their project, The Whole World Sounded, is a simple sentence from Nan Shepherd’s novel The Quarry Wood.
‘Gales brandished the half-denuded boughs and whirled the leaves in madcap companies about the roads. The whole world sounded. A roaring and a rustle and a creak was everywhere. The dust and dead leaves eddied in the gateways.’
Nan Shepherd is the woman who Hannah is reflecting on in her piece. Both Hannah and Claire feel that this line, ‘The whole world sounded.’ captures the intention we require to tune into lesser heard voices, and that the novel The Quarry Wood and Nan herself, embody the strength and force of nature that is womanhood.
About the Students
Hannah is a fourth-year student of French and Politics & International Relations. Last year she returned from her year abroad program with the British Council where she taught English in primary schools in the South of France. There, reminded of the importance of the literature we fill our lives with Hannah used childhood classics to teach her classes, and write in her spare time. She's had a long-time connection to author Nan Shepherd, from their shared home in the Northeast of Scotland to literary connections spanning 6 years. Hannah's contributions reflect on the importance of Shepherd's ultimate novel 'The Living Mountain' in a piece about the beauty of nature and the act of coming home.
Claire recently graduated from the University’s MLitt Creative Writing programme. She is now researching the role of storytelling and oral history in the processing and repetitional cycles of trauma while she works towards her DFA. Claire is writing her first novel, and her short fiction has been printed in publications such as Gutter. She was shortlisted for the 2023 Bridport Prize. Claire recently wrote an essay where she considered the compensations women make, and the balance of equality within a marriage or partnership. The essay reflects on a piece of art by Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh and Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Claire feels that Margaret’s role in the Mackintosh ‘brand’ and the aesthetic almost exclusively synonymous with her husband, has been underplayed and wanted to use the opportunity of this project to ask other artists and performers to share their reflections on women they feel deserve more recognition within the arts.