Dr. Felicity Ford: soundtrack for Bathing & Dressing, Part 1 & Part 2
- Ford, Felicity
- Date:
- 2012
- Reference:
- TP2
- Archives and manuscripts
About this work
Description
Dr Felicity Ford, sound artist and composer, was commissioned in 2012 by the Moving Image & Sound Collection to create a soundtrack for the silent Wellcome Library film which was made in 1935, Bathing & Dressing, Part 1 & Part 2. The new piece is distributed by the BFI on a DVD release entitled Your Children and You.This collection of sound files represents many of the 'raw' audio elements, such as her field recordings which were recorded and used in the production. These files are freely available to use under a Creative Commons licence with appropriate credits.
Ford commented that her aim was to celebrate the pre-NHS period and to convey an impression of the places and circumstances in which the film was made. The film itself, in two parts, focusses on the intimate relationship of a mother with her young baby. It was shot at the 'Model Infant Welfare Centre' which belonged to the Carnegie Welfare Centre, Shoreditch, in London and there are a number of films from this era which promote 'Mothercraft', an educational system developed by Dr Truby King in Canada which was widely adopted in the 1930s by medical health practitioners. The films would have been screened to audiences of mothers-to-be and Ford's response was to evoke this communal viewing experience. Some of the sound elements have been processed to reflect the media from the 1930s and the piano music was improvised in time to the film. The effect was to create 'the sonic documentary media equivalent of old film stock'. Ford is indebted to old home recordings from the 1930s and 40s sourced from the British Library's Sound Archive.
Ford wishes to credit some of the participants in the project (Helena Murray and her mother) as well as the other unnamed mothers and babies who contributed to the project.