Uluzuzulalia was a wild romp through the possibilities for the voice for children aged 6-11. First in Winchester, and then on a tour of England, Queen Victor the Fabulous welcomed her vocalising subjects into their Queeningdom, and Bobolo welcomed their partying speakers into her Bobolorb. The Queen explored all the kinds of sounds we make without language, including a beatboxing and looping party, lighting vocal fires, howling at the moon and creating a tornado… and Bobolo in their giddy way brought children into phonemes, the anatomy of the voice and composing environments by filling bubbles with their sounds. The children and their adults revelled in wild voicing. The long R+D process for Uluzuzulalia helped us develop the concept of the ‘voice-expanding mirror’ and the extensive feedback we took and the test audiences we worked with helped us refine and better the work. The Voice Trunk and Voice Bubbles were born from Ulu, all part of the research-creation strand Vivacious Voices in Action. All this work was made possible, initially, by a Wellcome Trust Large Arts Award.

Artistic direction, Yvon Bonenfant. Collaborators included: Jill Dowse, Elohor Pedro Knowles (devising performers); Kingsley Ash (coding, digital design, audiovisual, tactile stimuli); Ali Maclaurin (visual, spatial, object design); Ricardo da Fonseca (production management) and producers Ghislaine Granger, Nick Sweeting, Natasha Davis, and Julia Haferkorn. Our principal scientific collaborator was Prof. Catherine Best, with input on our installation work from Dr Ruth Epstein and Nimesh Patel. This substantial work programme was funded, in stages, by the Wellcome Trust Small, Large and Extension Arts Awards, Arts Council England, the University of Winchester, UK; our touring venues (incluing ArtsDepot, mac Birmingham, and others). The Point, Eastleigh’s, Creation Space hosted our development process and invited school groups and families to our early workshops and showings so that we could learn best how to engage them in the experiences.