Listening, Noticing, Experiencing

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“once you have opened your ears you cannot simply close them off again. Even if you wanted to...”

I have found listening and sound recording to be a very useful mode for engaging with the environment and the wider the world.

After using narrative methodology for my PhD, collecting stories and experiences from people who hear voices I became interested in widening my skills and began listening to and recording environmental sounds. I was lucky enough to attend the Wild Eye Sound Recording for Wildlife run by Chris Watson and Jez riley French in 2012 and brought my skills back to Manchester to share with the group at St Luke’s Art Project. Since then, we have run a project called: Creating Conversations inspired by US Story Corps (prior to the BBC’s Listening Project), and various listening workshops in the local area with Sound Artist Amanda Belantara sharing our work on her international platform: Kinokophone. In 2013 I invited Jez riley French to run a couple of days workshops for St Luke’s participants facilitating listening to the sounds in two local 
heritage sites: Elizabeth Gaskell’s House (during renovation) and Victoria Baths. These workshops culminated in a public event at the baths:




This listening work developed into the tlc current project Mapping Manchester’s Quiet Spaces project - which is an arts-based exploration into the relationship between environmental sound our state of mind. The project has naturally evolved to explore the impact of nature and green spaces more generally on our well-being.

We often use listening exercises to ground ourselves and connect to place and to the moment before we begin other methods and practices of engagement. Exciting events have included gathering in a carpark at 3am before 
being let into Parrs Wood Environmental Centre and led into a small woodland where we sat in a small clearing on logs in the pitch dark, overhung with branches and slowly before we even perceived the light to change the birds began their glorious ensemble, marking the beginning of the day. It was an extraordinary experience of the senses and of communion - between our group but with the more-than-human beings with whom we shared the space.

Through this work my own relationship and sensitivity to sound and listening has expanded and been incorporated into much of the work that I do. It is like once you have opened your ears you cannot simply close them off again. Even if you wanted to.