Hosted at Hills Arts Centre, #VinylOutcry is a mixed media exhibition exploring the materials and textures of audio production through cassette tape and vinyl records. The project is led by Jay Sykes, offering early career curators the opportunity to collaborate and host a city centre gallery exhibition.

Working in partnership with Helix Arts, Jay created this audio collage of voices of the residents of North Shields and Wallsend in the north east - as they share their reflections about their town centres and open green spaces in a post-pandemic world.

From its very first opening on Christmas Eve in 1852 as a bookshop, to its closure in 2006, Hills bookshop remained a fondly-remembered part of Sunderland's history. 'Hills Are Alive' honours the building’s legacy alongside its re-opening as a new multi-use arts centre, through the creation of a sound art piece based on a series of story-writing workshops.

Working with the poetry of Carol Ann Duffy, this project partnership with Sunderland Culture and 1418 saw Jay bring together two dozen community members to enhance Duffy's poem in audio. Commemorating 100 years since the First World War, this community audio poem was played on headphones at SeaBurn beach as part of a free public event.

“Rainbow Echoes” is a series of composed audio vignettes, woven into an audio tapestry of recorded interviews, field recordings, and experimental sound art. They cluster into thematic responses, engineering new and existing dialogues about coronavirus and the lockdown; they call and answer each other, echoing over a thirty-minute duration across the Norfolk Street Arts’ gallery.