King Oswald’s fame spread far from the original heartlands of his power in northern England, taking root in southern Germany, Austria and Northern Italy, where new stories were told about him. Our creative project continues this tradition of re-working Oswald’s story to fit new contexts and to serve local communities. It is a collaboration between cultural historians Johanna Dale and Sarah Bowden and creative practitioners Hannah Conway, Natasha Freedman, Hazel Gould and Sinéad O’Neill. You can find out more about them below!
Sarah Bowden
Sarah is a medieval scholar with a particular interest in the literary culture of the German lands in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. She studied in Cambridge, Freiburg im Breisgau and Cologne and joined King’s College London as a Lecturer in German in 2012 after a research fellowship in Oxford. She is particularly interested in the development of German as a literary language and the relationship between German and Latin; in the emergence of a discourse of vernacular religious poetry; and in the manuscript transmission of German-language writing in the 12th century. In 2018 Sarah was awarded a Fellowship for Experienced Researchers by the Humboldt Foundation to work on this project. She is involved in related projects on temporalities and medieval poetic anthologies, working together with colleagues in the UK, Europe and USA. Sarah is also Co-Investigator on the AHRC-funded project ‘Liturgical and literary landscapes: the cult of St Oswald of Northumbria in the German-speaking world’
Hannah Conway
Ivor Novello award winning composer Hannah Conway is internationally recognised for her innovative work with leading opera houses, orchestras, cultural organisations and research-innovation institutions. She has directed projects in eighteen countries as a composer and artistic director including projects as a broadcaster for BBC Radio, on-stage presenter and cultural moderator for the European Union Commission. At the heart of everything is dynamic collaboration with diverse and under-represented communities to create new music and stories. Her works invite audiences to reflect on perceptions of society and self, exploring how the arts and artists can be catalysts for systemic change.
She is Artistic Director and founder of Sound Voice, an award-winning company creating new artistic works which change the way that individuals, communities and organisations, think, do and listen, cross sector. She specialises in the co-creation of live performance and immersive digital installation works using sung and spoken voices to platform hidden narratives and lived experience. Her works bring together new collaborations between people with lived expertise, artists and professionals cross sector in biomedical research, science, technology and healthcare. She was awarded both the European FEDORA Digital Prize 2023 and Classical:NEXT Innovation Award 2024 for her critically acclaimed, immersive opera-video installation, The Sound Voice Project, exploring stories of voice loss and identity.
Her music has been broadcast by BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4, BBC Television and featured by the Sunday Times, Guardian and on the BBC news. Her radio documentary ‘Hear My Voice‘ was commissioned by BBC Radio 4, presenting her work exploring voice and identity in 2023. Her immersive installation works have been selected to feature at the Copenhagen Documentary Festival (COP:DOX) and Sheffield Doc-Fest U.K.
Johanna Dale
Johanna Dale is a medieval cultural historian, who has been based at University College London since September 2016. She studied at Cambridge and the University of East Anglia and has previously worked in the Department of German at the University of Cambridge and in the Department of History at the University of Heidelberg. She is interested in the intersection of political and cultural history in the medieval period, with a particular focus on British and German-speaking lands. Her PhD comprised a comparative study of the influence of coronation liturgy on images of kingship in England, France and the Empire, c.1050-c.1250. Liturgy continues to be a focal point of her work as she tracks the spread of Oswald’s cult from the north of England in the seventh century to northern Italy in the seventeenth century. She is also interested in the layers of history embedded in landscapes and believes in relevance of the past to local communities today.
Natasha Freedman
Natasha Freedman is a producer and director with experience of nurturing interdisciplinary collaborations to open up ways of thinking, challenge dominant mindsets and drive change.
She has worked with different forms of storytelling from animation to opera, with world-leading theatre makers, artists and writers, and with storytellers whose voices are rarely heard – young people, sex workers, nurses and communities with lived experience of injustice and marginalisation. All her work has been motivated by a recognition of the need to shift whose stories we hear, and where and how we listen. She founded the performing arts programme in Chelsea & Westminster Hospital, directed Cape Farewell to drive culture change around the climate, and produced international touring theatre productions with Sulayman Al Bassam to open a lens onto the contemporary Arab world in an increasingly polarised media landscape since 9/11. She reimagined the learning programmes for Complicite theatre company and English National Opera, and was until recently Chair of Improbable Theatre.
She is Producer for AKO Storytelling Institute at University of the Arts London, produces an experimental programme in the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, and is a regular visiting tutor at the National Film & Television School and Royal Academy of Arts.
Hazel Gould
Hazel Gould is a writer, director and workshop leader who specialises in the creation of new opera. At the core of all of Hazel’s work is her belief that art has the power to change and enhance lives. Her work as a librettist and director is based on collaborative practice, and she creates work both with and for a diverse range of professional and non-professional artists and participants.
Hazel trained at Manchester University and Central School of Speech and Drama. Her work in learning and participation is broad and wide ranging, and she has worked with thousands of diverse participants to explore and create art over a 20-year career.
Sinéad O’ Neill
Irish Director Sinéad O’Neill’s work for stage is characterised by distinctive movement, striking imagery, and dynamic musicality. Sinéad’s portfolio ranges from co-creating original music theatre to directing repertory opera, and she is equally at home working with one or one hundred (plus) performers! She is currently engaged by Glyndebourne as director of the World Premiere of Jonathan Dove and April De Angelis’s new opera, Uprising. Sinéad has extensive experience of creating new work, including with her long-time collaborator, composer Matt Rogers, with whom she created Amor Mundi (conceived and written by Zsuzsanna Ardó), The Raven, On the Axis of this World and And London Burned.
She founded Cambridge City Opera to create original music theatre for new audiences, with projects such as The Barrington Hippo and On the Axis of this World showcased at Cambridge Science Festival. She co-created Pay the Piper with composers Ailie Robertson, Cecilia Livingstone, Ninfea Crutwell-Reade and Anna Appleby and writer Hazel Gould for Glyndebourne Youth Opera (2022). During the pandemic, Sinéad was commissioned by The Grange Festival to create Precipice, a site-specific promenade performance encompassing opera, dance, circus and spoken word, which she wrote and directed, and which was highly acclaimed for its haunting imagery, ambitious scope and originality.
In recent years, Sinéad directed The Spectre Knight (composer: Alfred Cellier) for Wexford Festival Opera and Alcina, The Sofa and Calisto (composers: Francesca Caccini; Elizabeth Maconchy; Francesco Cavalli) for RIAM, Dublin. Previously for Glyndebourne, Sinéad has directed two BBC Proms, the Glyndebourne Opera Cup with Sky Arts, the 50th Anniversary Gala at Queen Elizabeth Hall, and revivals of Il barbiere di Siviglia and L’elisir d’amore.
Oswald of Northumbria 