Could you briefly explain the driving force/motivation behind your work?

The driving force behind the work of Sound Matters is the fact that people need to learn to bloody listen if we are to have a hope in hell of addressing the myriad crises we face.  By listening, we don’t mean being attentive to the boring diatribe of mainstream environmentalism which sells itself on a platform of limits and restrictions.  We mean listening to the more-than-human world with all its mess and fecundity – the repository of all wisdom and knowledge.  Of course, listening to one another is important but listening to the more-than-human is so much more inspiring, liberating and worth hearing compared to the human drivel which shapes the modern world.  Just listen to the people in power – so much rubbish designed to keep us behaving in ways that lubricate the rusty cogs of late modernity.

Our work is motivated by a belief that there are myriad voices out there that need to be heard – voices that are being silenced by a genocidal and ecocidal system that grows as the more-than-human, and the marginalised human, disappears.  We record these voices in the belief that they are the base(bass)lines of regenerative cultures and need to be heard loud and clear.  We work with broken landscapes, and the life that inhabits them, and do things with various bits of audio technology to make sure a story is told about how inspiration can be brought back to landscapes that have been mined of their life through various human practices that lay waste to land for short-term economic gain.  

Sound Matters is driven by a belief that soundscapes have profound stories to tell which our overly visual societies tend to ignore.  Sound is powerful – every process shaping the world creates a soundscape and we believe that creating regenerative soundscapes can, and will, help create solutions that are truly fit-for-purpose.  We’re interested in sound because we believe listening is the answer to creating a better world.

Work Process

Our work starts with a process that we call Integral Listening – Integral Listening is much deeper than deep listening and is a process we have been developing over ten years of working with soundscapes.  Of course, the basis of Integral Listening is, you guessed it, listening!  We go to places and we listen; we listen and we record.  We search for indicator sounds of vulnerability and regeneration.  We search for interesting people who are engaged with soundscapes – musicians, lovers of the more-than-human world, regenerations practitioners etc.  We work with these people to create soundscape experiences – music, installations, listening experiences etc.  

Our work is basically about engagement – we try to engage people with the wonders of soundscapes.  Our work helps people listen in different ways and encourages them to hear the soundscape as a tool for shaping regenerative processes.  We use a tool called the: Sound System for Regenerative Futures framework which basically uses five sound based parameters for helping people engage with the processes shaping soundscapes but, perhaps more importantly, helps people start using sound as a way to create regenerative systems.

Where/How has your work engaged with systems or transformative change-making?

Perhaps the clearest example of where, and how, our work has engaged with systems of transformative change-making is the work we have been doing in southern Spain.  We are involved in a regenerative soundscape project in a large area of often degraded landscapes that unites the regions of the Altiplano de Granada, Los Vélez, Alto Almanzora, Guadix and the region northwest of Murcia.

Here we are supporting the regenerative practices of local partners who are doing amazing work to transform landscapes so they can support both human and more-than-human life.  Our role has been to support this work with sounds and music that return inspiration to the land.  Successful landscape regeneration work depends on people being inspired so they can make transformative change a reality.  Music, soundscape analysis, listening retreats, sound walks etc are all part of the work we do to return inspiration to this region.  We work with amazing people who are dedicated to creating a truly living landscape.  Our list of partners is too long to mention here – all of them are great and deserve special mention!

How Can the transformations community support your work?

As everyone knows, funding can be an issue with any worthwhile project so we are always looking for people who have lots of money and want to give it away to worthy projects like ours!  We also want to build collaborations with likeminded people.  We’d love to work with researchers and scientists who want to explore ways of making data come alive, dance!  Our work is about inspiring others and we are very aware that many scientists, for example, struggle with telling a compelling story so we’d love to work with scientists and researchers who are interested in the using the power of sound to tell new stories of change.  We are lucky to be working with a lot of artists; however, we’re always keen to build new partnerships especially with visual artists who might be interested in using sound and listening in their practice.