That goon Herbert has taken part in various collaborative projects with other artists, these include:

A CD-ROM project, edited by Herbert and co-ordinated by New Writing North, with technical support initially from Andy Armstrong at Tagish, and latterly from Tony Silvester at Trinity Media Group. This involved five artists, five prose writers, and five poets, took a year to get going, and several more to complete. More details, including where to get your very own fine n shiny CD, may be found here.

Radio Free East Shields

(Livestock)

A radio project webcast by Stockton's Arc Centre, for the Livestock project . This half-hour programme purported to be broadcast from a sunken pirate radio station located somewhere off the Tyne estuary. The history of East Shields, a lost Atlantis-type island, is recounted in an eponymous ballad. Remember Vincent Price in the City Beneath the Sea , think Debussy's drowned cathedral, recall Doctor Who's Sea-Devils, and you'll be ready to tune into Brother Guglielmus' crackly recording. Unfortunately you'll then discover that it appears to be lost.

One day, adverts for long-bust companies and their unsellable products, punkish drum n bass sessions by recently-drowned musicians, brief bursts of misshapen electronica and Keith Morris' sinuous jazz will float from your speakers. Once I've found it. The poetry, by Herbert, Sean O'Brien, Katrina Porteous and Mark Robinson, is mostly derived from BON, but it has suffered a sea-change into something wierd and low-fi. From Herbert's ongoing dream of the gesamtkunstwerk, Das Tynegold.

Time Prints

Herbert contributed the text to a stained glass piece by the artist Bridget Jones which is now part of the Dumfries and Galloway Tourist Information Centre in Dumfries. He's worked with Bridget before on a proposal for the National Glass Centre in Sunderland (shortlisted but not commissioned), which nearly became a virtual spiral staircase in BON (he never got the file back from Tagish); and on one pane which did make it in to the Glass Centre. View their Glass Alphabet.

Four Seasons in Woodland/Biggfest etc.

With composer Keith Morris, he worked on the libretto for an extended musical piece for choir, brass band, street band, octet, two singers and poet. Premiered at the Caedmon Hall, Gateshead in December 1996; other performances include the 1997 Durham Literary Festival. This celebrated a series of four sculptures by artists Graciela Ainsworth, Alberto Carneiro, Maurice O'Connell and Laurent Reynes.

In 1999, yet another sideshoot from BON spawned Music from the Drowned Book, performed at Live Theatre by Herbert, Sean O' Brien and Katrina Porteous. Sean has subsequently gone on to work with Keith on Downriver, a jazz musical.

Skylines

This project was organised by Cumbria Arts in Education, and involved two poets, two sculptors, and pupils from fourteen schools across the Lake District. The participants were Herbert, calligrapher John Neilson, and pupils from primary and secondary schools across the north of Cumbria; and poet Graham Mort and the sculptor Graciela Ainsworth, together with seven schools from the south of the Lake District. Their work resulted in some fourteen sculptures being placed in Brockhole National Park on the shores of Lake Windermere. It also led to the world's tallest book, an anthology of poems which made it into the Guinness Book of Records.

Rising Sun

A sculpture trail at the Rising Sun Country Park, near Wallsend, North Tyneside. Based around a legend for the park, built up from poetry and story-telling. This got about two pieces in before funding ran out, and has as a result been puzzling those few visitors who like to think of successive pieces of sculpture as part of an unfolding narrative, ie no-one noticed.

Go back before the minutiae drowns you!