Go Find Miracles was a new sound artwork by 2023 Turner Prize-nominated artist Rory Pilgrim for Waterloo station commissioned by Art on the Underground.
This new work emerged from Pilgrim’s long-term work with those affected by the criminal justice system. Recorded in two underground locations, with Go Find Miracles, Pilgrim asked how we go beneath the surface to imagine new structures of repair and possibility.
The work was developed in collaboration with HMP/YOI Portland and the Prison Choir Project, as well as the Mayor of London’s Culture and Community Spaces at Risk programme (CCSaR) and the Feminist Library in Peckham. Go Find Miracles could be heard at Waterloo Underground station along the travelator connecting the Northern and Jubilee lines, between 14-25 July 2025.
Rory Pilgrim works collaboratively and in dialogue with others, across music composition, performance, film, drawing and text, reflecting and redefining how we come together to shape social change.
Go Find Miracles focused on the role that the Isle of Portland, a small island in the English Channel, has played in shaping London through its quarries. Portland stone has been used to build many of London’s most iconic buildings, including the Tower of London, St Paul’s Cathedral, TfL’s historic headquarters – 55 Broadway, and Waterloo station itself. Trains to and from Portland’s closest station, Weymouth, arrive and depart from Waterloo – which acts as a gateway to the island, whose resources have built so much of the capital.
The Isle of Portland is also the site of two prisons, including HMP/YOI Portland, and the former site of prison barge HMP Weare and the Bibby Stockholm which temporarily housed asylum seekers. The labour of the people imprisoned on the island has historically shaped its landscape, with the many stone quarries originally being worked by imprisoned people who were initially brought to Portland in 1848 to construct the 2.84-mile-long harbour breakwater.
Expanding from Pilgrim’s long-term collaboration with communities on Portland and developed following a workshop at The Feminist Library in London, which used collections of intersectional feminist literature from the 1970s until the present day, Go Find Miracles explored the ways that the law impacts our lives and our environment. Reflecting on the idea of a miracle as an opening for change and a prayer as a sequence of connection through the words we share with each other, the artwork was structured around a call and response prayer.
Go Find Miracles was recorded underground in a Portland stone quarry, amongst the layers in which deep time connects us with our modern world, and on the disused Jubilee line platform at Charing Cross London Underground station: bringing voices from Portland and London together.
The sound work took the form of a conversation, spoken reflections and poetry by Carina Murray and Holly Upton were accompanied by music composed by Pilgrim and sung by soloist Robyn Haddon, alumni of the Prison Choir Project, and a further choir of singers with whom Pilgrim has previously collaborated for projects including pink & green, 2024 and RAFTS, 2022. The lyrics and melodies of the work were partly written together with men from HMP/YOI Portland.
Constituting a prayer of call and response that ultimately traces a 10-minute loop without end, Go Find Miracles asked, if we break the loop, is it here we find space for miracles?
Go Find Miracles could be heard alongside visual artworks by Pilgrim depicting songbirds carrying messages between London and Portland. These drawings were installed throughout Waterloo Underground station making visible the listening experience and the ripple of connection between the two places explored in the work.
An expanded leaflet documenting the development of Go Find Miracles was available to collect from the station. A short film by 2025 Jarman award nominees, Other Cinemas, about the making of Go Find Miracles, is available to view here.
Go Find Miracles is the third audio commission developed in collaboration with The Mayor of London’s Culture and Community Space’s at Risk programme (CCSaR) to spotlight and amplify grassroots organisations they have supported, and produce audio installations that can be heard across London Underground stations.
Credits
Collaborators: The Mayor of London’s Culture and Community Spaces at Risk team, The Feminist Library, HMP/YOI Portland, Learners from HMP/YOI Portland & The Prison Choir Project
Design: Wolfe Hall
Production & facilitation: Elizabeth Graham & Rory Pilgrim
Composition: Rory Pilgrim
Speakers: Carina Murray & Holly Upton
Sound recording & mixing: Lucas August
Sound editing: Nada Smiljanic
Singers: Adam Green, Darren, George Chron, Marcello, Robyn Haddon, Todd Harris, Seraphina D’Arby and Marged Siôn
TfL Colleagues: Fernando Soler & Lota Anyakora
Recorded in an Albion Stone Ltd Portland stone mine on the Isle of Dorset, The Crypt Studio and on the disused Jubilee line platform at Charing Cross Underground station.
About Carina Murray
Carina Murray, who resides in Dagenham, expresses her creativity through the forms of improvisation and performance as a means of expressing and vocalising what needs to be seen and heard whilst embodying hope. Carina has co-created and performed in a short film production, Hope, commissioned by Clean Break Theatre Company directed by Kirsty Housley, and previously worked with Rory Pilgrim alongside other community members on their project, Rafts. In Go Find Miracles, Carina offers her reflections on the concept of transforming what can bind you into a means of transporting yourself to inner freedom whilst creating a ripple effect.
About Holly Upton
Holly is a neurodiversity support manager at HMP Portland and has worked within the education department for 5 years. The education, skills and work team, that Holly is proud to be a part of, focuses on reducing reoffending by equipping people in prison with the skills, qualifications and confidence to move into a positive lifestyle on release. Holly also writes poetry. Centering the contrast between joy and the darkest places we visit as humans, Holly’s work celebrates the beauty and importance of honouring the humanity we see in those we build connection with.
About Rory Pilgrim
Rory Pilgrim (Bristol, 1988) works in a wide range of media including songwriting, composing music, film, music video, text, drawing and live performances. Centred on emancipatory concerns, Pilgrim aims to challenge the nature of how we come together, speak, listen and strive for social change through sharing and voicing personal experience. Strongly influenced by the origins of activist, feminist and socially engaged art, Pilgrim works with others through different methods of dialogue, collaboration and workshops. In an age of increasing technological interaction, Rory’s work creates connections between activism, spirituality, music and how we form community locally and globally from both beyond and behind our screens.
Recent Solo Shows include: Chisenhale Gallery (2024), Landhuis Oud Amelisweerd – Centraal Museum Utrecht (2024), WAMX, Turku (2022), Kunstverein Braunschweig (duo-2021), Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe (2020), Between Bridges, Berlin (2019) Ming Studios, Boise (2019), Andriesse-Eyck Gallery, Amsterdam NL (2018) and South London Gallery (2018). In 2019, Pilgrim was the winner of the Prix de Rome and was in 2023 nominated for the Turner Prize.
About the Mayor of London’s Culture and Community Spaces at Risk programme
The Mayor of London’s Culture and Community Spaces at Risk programme (CCSaR) is the only Greater London Authority programme focussed on safeguarding existing spaces across London – protecting both their social and economic value. They provide expertise to help protect against threats to London’s cultural and community-led spaces, and directly support organisations to save spaces at risk. The Mayor of London’s Culture and Community Spaces at Risk programme (CCSaR) is working with Art on the Underground for the third year to spotlight and amplify grassroots organisations they have supported to produce audio installations that can be heard across London Underground stations.
About Feminist Library
The Feminist Library is a large archive collection of feminist literature, which is based in Peckham, London. They support research, activist and community projects in this field. The Library is trans-inclusive, welcomes visitors of any gender, does not require registration or membership, and provides an intersectional space for the exploration of feminism.
About The Prison Choir Project
The Prison Choir Project is a Koestler PLATINUM Award winning Charity whose objectives are to rehabilitate prisoners, ex-offenders and people experiencing mental disorder by the advance of the arts and culture, particularly through the performance of opera, song, and choral music. They hope, through music and in particular singing, to provide a pathway towards establishing a reduction in reoffending, building self-esteem, improving self-confidence and employability skills for all those involved.
