Virtual tour of our Barrow Park HQ – made for the Wilderness Art Conference, Hailuoto, Finland, 2012.

Octopus is a Cumbria-based sound art and music organisation founded in 2009 by artists John Hall, Andrew Deakin and Glenn Boulter.

Our first project was the 2009 FON Festival, taking place in a former shipyard canteen in Barrow-in-Furness and featuring performances and new work from Mobile Radio, Faust, Richard Youngs, John Wall, Haco, Susan Matthews, Pram and more.

This was followed in 2010 by a series of residencies, performances and public realm sound art commissions in partnership with other arts organisations across the North West. Events included film screenings, residencies from AGF and Hildur Gudnadottir, workshops and a series of commissions for Barrow Park bandstand from artists including Paul Rooney, Dan Fox, Mary Stark, Ellie Chaney and C97.

After establishing a permanent base at Piel View House in Barrow Park and achieving Arts Council England National Portfolio Status in 2011, we delivered the second FON Festival, featuring outdoor works for the park Crazy Golf Hack and the Open Source Swan Pedalo, residencies from Philip Jeck, AGF and Tetsuo Kogawa and performances from Dopplereffekt, Boxcutter, Lee Gamble and Tom Scott.

Projects for 2012/13 include continuing our ongoing residency programme, further collaborations with Black Combe and Sacred Heart Primary Schools, a monthly hardware hacking group and a series of live broadcasts under our FON Air radio banner.