Just Before It Happened Ltd is an arts organisation run by Rebekah Ford. Telling visual and audio stories, she has been working on analogue and digital projects for over 25 years including workshop creation, facilitation, mentoring and very large-scale digital projects.
Rebekah has worked for various organisations including: V&A, Royal Opera House, Royal Shakespeare Company, ENO, Tate, BBC, Southbank Centre, Penguin Books, ShiftMS, Unthinkable and NHS Digital. She is currently working on several binaural sound projects.
Projects & collaborations
Act as if the house is on fire
Included in a global reimagining of urban sounds, this cut up and processed piece was cut up from the original track from the Future Cities project to create what started to sound like a very formidable battle march. The title is based on a quote from Greta Thunberg and also refers back to the anti-smoking march of the original piece.
The theme is London... why?
As part of Sabrina Fuller's Love, Dinner, Flowers, Dances (Money, Work, Deadlines, Power) project, Rivelino Lopes and I were asked to work on a piece about collaboration. I recorded our discussion about the purpose of our work which became the main piece. The discussion was chopped and edited and laid over a Cape Verdean beat.
The misfortune teller
In development and part of the pilot scheme commissions for Museum in a Box ™. Placing an object on the box using NFC technology, sound is then triggered. The Misfortune Teller will use ASMR binaural techniques to whisper neurosis and phobia affirmations into the participant's ears based on chosen cards.
Don't let go
The development of a binaural walk based on the memoirs of my grandfather in 1919. It's a walk that he took at the age of 7 with his father who suffered from severe shellshock. The aim of the walk will help the participants understand the personal aftermath of a major historical event.
The synesthesia complex
In development and utilising Museum In A Box ™ once more, the functionality is swapped and the objects added to the box are a description of the sound that's associated with them. Several discussions will be recorded with sound synesthetes in order to see if there's any consensus about what the sounds look like to them.
Newsdesk of the future @ Alchemy Southbank
Part of Annette Mees' Almanac of the Future project. This workshop and game design involved engaging attendees of the Alchemy Festival at The Southbank Centre to invent news headlines created as an outcome of a card game devised by Annette and designed by me.
Eda Scheurer had one eye and smoked a pipe
A illustrative look into an interesting family history of an every day washerwoman who had one eye, smoked a pipe and had fights with men. The work is a box of artifacts that tell the story of this woman's life.
ShiftMS vsMS commission
ShiftMS commisioned 6 artists to create work based on a given medical statistic. I worked on a piece about relationship fears for the newly diagnosed. The piece was full of allegory and objects about losing your identity points in space and time.
Return to sender
For 24 years, I returned an A4 envelope addressed to the previous occupant of my property. By year 20, I began to vent my frustrations by ranting on the envelope then illsutrating it. I was to celebrated the quarter century by holding an art event. However, after 24 years someone finally listened and stopped sending them.
The four horsemen of the apocalyse
Storytelling piece about the cusp of losing innocence. The boys are completely unaware of the devastation behind them. The background references current warfare interspersed with 4 symbols of the apocalyse plus the older boy wears a bubble badge referencing Homo Bulla and the fragility of life.