The Sound and Colour Collective are an arts and music based group who run festival workshops to encourage the exploration of expression in music, field recordings, and colour. The workshops are led by composers, and performers Haiku Salut, Visual Artist and lecturer Geoffrey Litherland and Art Educator Katy McCabe and are supported by a team of creatives in the visual arts, music and literature industries, all from the Derbyshire Dales.  

Our latest workshop is called ‘Marking Time’ and is available for bookings for the 2025 festival season. If you are interested in a workshop at your festival please email haikusalut@gmail.com for booking. For more information on the current workshop see below.

Marking Time: "Art is how we decorate space, music is how we decorate time" (Jean-Michel Basquiat)  

The “Marking Time” workshop gives the smallest festival goers a chance to express themselves through movement, sound and vision, a way that feels both natural and exciting, responding to the world around them. It encourages and celebrates childrens natural instincts to cut shapes, play with different materials, move and get creative with sound, sight, and touch.  

Movement: Responding and moving to an evolving soundscape composed by Haiku Salut, this “hands-on" workshop is all about collaboration and self-expression. Children will use paint, chalk, collage (including OS maps of the area local to the festival), and pens to make marks to the music. They will move round the piece and move their bodies to develop something that is felt, seen, and created.  

Sound: For this workshop, Haiku Salut have composed a generative piece of music that will develop alongside the piece.  It will include field recordings from archives (including cosmic transmissions courtesy of NASA) as well as eco-sounds recorded on site and interwoven over the course of the festival. This ever-changing soundtrack reflects the passage of time and the evolving nature of the world around us.  

Vision: Just as the sound and movement develop and change over time, so will the artwork. Children will see how each layer builds on the last, creating something that is truly unique. Time evolves and layers of depth are created. They will draw and explore small moments in time and turn them into lasting visual expressions, making time a tangible and personal experience. 

The process gives children the freedom to experiment, collaborate, and express themselves in a way that celebrates their natural instincts, as children, to investigate materials, move and explore the world around them. Responding to layers, repetition and change, reflecting the passage of time. By allowing them to interact with art in a “hands-on" way, we're showing them that art is about the journey, the passage of time, not the destination. It encourages curiosity and collaboration and gives them the freedom to see how their own work fits into a larger picture. It also gives them the opportunity to explore movement, sound and vision while seeing how time — through layers and evolving materials — shapes the final piece. They'll explore how their creative process can shift and change.  

Accessibility: We aim to create a safe collaborative space promoting equality, inclusion and diversity. The space will have level access and individuals are free to interact with the piece however they choose and are able to, with everyone’s contributions equally valid and welcomed.  

Our experience: The Sound and Colour Collective, are a group of musicians, visual artists and art educators with a shared vision that has brought them together to provide high quality, expressive and ambitious workshops and experiences. Haiku Salut are critically acclaimed performers and composers and have toured the UK, Europe and Japan. Geoff Diego Litherland, born in Mexico, but currently based in Wirksworth, completed an MFA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths University of London 2012. He is an Artist with a considerable exhibition profile, a part-time lecturer at Nottingham Trent University and the co-director of Haarlem Artspace. Litherland explores and questions our relationship to the natural world through an engagement with materials, processes and locality.  Katy McCabe has over 13 years experience in Arts education delivering ambitious, process led curriculums with student experiences at the heart if what she does. Her Art education also encompasses coaching and training teachers, delivering workshops and helping run festivals in the Peak District including the Wirksworth Festival and the Buxton International Festival.