Skyscape was a commission by Nottingham Trent University in partnership with Creswell Crags Museum and Prehistoric Gorge – a limestone gorge on the border of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, and Britain’s most northerly Ice Age site. The project formed part of a wider interdisciplinary research initiative led by Dr Daniel Brown and Dr Katharina Massing at NTU, exploring skyscape as intangible heritage through augmented reality, audience engagement, and creative practice.

Brehony was commissioned as the project’s artist, making three short films that were exhibited as an audiovisual installation at Creswell Crags Museum, and which formed the creative foundation for a developing AR app designed to bring the heritage of the night sky to daytime visitors. Working across deep time and the present – from Neanderthal communities sheltering in the gorge’s caves 40,000 years ago to the light-polluted skies above post-industrial neighbourhoods today – the films explored skyscape as a site of shared cultural memory, wonder, and political condition.

Developed across four thematic territories – Curiosity and Wonder; Mystic and Scientific; Time and Nature; Deep Past and Your Past – the work wove together poetic written text, location sound, and moving image into three films, each an encounter with the site and with the enduring human impulse to look upward.

From the films:

“We all know what it is to carry history. Our bodies act as personal archives of lived experience. Of things we have seen, standing on different landscapes, observing shapes of sky.”

“No one sees sky in the same way. No one experiences time the same, yet we use the same words to describe it.”

“Dilemmas of our time – that we should be made to feel poor for challenging electricity’s affordability, rather than rich with clear vision of night sky.”

Made with support from Lars Koens, Paul Wallis, and Simon Knighton.

Testimony by Dr Angharad Jones
Curator, Creswell Heritage Trust

Fiona created three films for a temporary exhibition that was displayed at Creswell Crags from July
2022 to April 2023. Fiona conducted considerable research for these films, first by visiting the site and
attending some of the cave tours. She then emailed me, and we met online to discuss the context of
the film and any information she needed to know about the site and its past.

Prior to installation of the exhibition, Fiona sent across a first draft of her films. This was appreciated
so we could fact-check it, in order that our visitors engage with the most accurate information available.
Only minor amendments were required, and Fiona was very responsive in making these amendments
and quickly incorporated these into the final versions of the films.

The resulting films were beautiful in terms of both the spoken content and the visual elements. They
worked very well in the space, and provided a unique and engaging way for our visitors to engage with
Creswell Crags and its associated heritage.

It was a pleasure to work with Fiona, and I would happily work with her in the future, given her unique
way of accurately portraying Creswell Crags in such a creative and beautiful way.