Sound and the Outdoors: Site and Sound Symposium

Anne Bean

Anne Bean is a London-based artist working with sculpture, installation, sound, photography, painting and drawing. Her artistic practice has been pivotal in the development of live and performance art in the UK. Captivated by process and collaboration Bean works as the ‘space-between’ - a receiver, receptor, and conjuror. These strategies enable her to plug into time and timelessness. Since 1970 Anne Bean has presented solo and collaborative projects, worldwide.

Recently, her work was shown at Tate Britain, Somerset House, the Whitechapel Gallery, Matt’s Gallery, Turner Contemporary, the Hatton Gallery, Paris Photo, Photo London, Venice Biennale, Modern Art Oxford as well as a solo show with England & Co at Frieze Masters. In 2024, a performance was commissioned for Venice Performance Art Week and a new film, on Bow Gamelan Ensemble (1983-1990), which premiered at Tate, 2025 was funded by DACS Recollect programme. She received a Paul Hamlyn Foundation award, 2024.

Charles Hazlewood

Award-winning British conductor Charles Hazlewood has worked with many of the world's greatest orchestras; playing Carnegie Hall, the BBC Proms and collaborating with artists as diverse as Nigel Kennedy, Squarepusher, Goldie and Wyclef Jean. He has conducted over 200 world premieres, and won the Berlin Film Festival 'Golden Bear' for Best Film. He created the music in multiple landmark films for BBC TV and Sky Arts and made a 6-part tv series, ‘Reinventing the Orchestra’. He has won three Sony Radio Academy Awards for his BBC radio shows and has three TED talks to his name. A recent Castaway on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, he was honoured with the Sir Charles Groves prize for ‘his outstanding contribution to the musical life of the UK’ and will shortly be awarded an honorary doctorate by Bath Spa University. Charles founded and leads Paraorchestra: a ground-breaking ensemble of professional musicians with and without disabilities, who created SMOOSH! - a 70-piece wind and brass street band performing tub-thumping pop karaoke tunes on the move in a cacophonous and joyful mobile street party.

Julian Henriques

Sound artist and researcher Julian Henriques’ background as a filmmaker has informed his interests in the field of street technologies and cultures, particularly reggae dancehall sound systems and his focus on ‘sonic territorialisation’ - the Public and Personal Spaces of the Reggae Sound System Session. His interest in the intensities of auditory experience has also led him to explore the auditory environment of the unborn child, Sonic Womb research project.

His credits as a writer and director include the feature film Babymother, a reggae musical and improvised short drama We the Ragamuffin and numerous BBC and Channel Four documentaries with his production company Formation Films. Julian’s professional practice includes Knots & Donuts, installed at Tate Modern. His publications include the jointly authored Changing the Subject and Sonic Bodies: Reggae Sound Systems Performance Techniques and Ways of Knowing Julian Henriques is a Professor Department of Media and Communications, Goldsmiths, University of London where he is convenor of MA Cultural Studies programme and Principal Investigator of the Sonic Street Technologies ERC research project.

Tim Hill

Tim Hill is a musician, performer and event creator, specialising in outdoor celebrations, shows and music. Inspired by pioneering arts company Welfare State International, Tim has worked with many leading outdoor arts companies and runs the street band Tongues of Fire. He revels in, plays with, and explores, traditions of outdoor ritual and celebration, processions, street music and celebratory noise across many worlds of sound and music from improvising jazz and experimental music to English folk. Tim has played with samba bands around Stonehenge and on the back of trucks at Notting Hill Carnival, led giants through the streets of London, Dublin and Galway, created Olympic Torch events, cooked celebratory feasts, written wassail songs, and led funeral services and is artistic lead for The Sound of the Streets, a charity that creates street music, festivals and education projects.

Ray Lee

Ray Lee is an award-winning sound artist, theatre maker and composer. He creates spinning, whirling, and pendulous sound installations and performances that explore “circles of ether,” the invisible forces that surround us. His immersive and mesmerising works such as the world-wide hit Siren, Ethometric Museum and his monumental outdoor works Chorus and Ring Out are a unique synthesis of art forms, both accessible and engaging for a wide audience. His new outdoor work Congregation, for one hundred interactive sonic spheres, was funded by Without Walls and toured throughout the UK in 2019. His music-theatre work Ethometric Museum won him the 2012 British Composer of the Year for Sonic Art. Siren toured the world with significant British Council support. Force Field was awarded an honorary mention in the 2008 Prix Ars Electronica. He is a Professor of Sound Art at Oxford Brookes University and an associate artist of OCM (Oxford Contemporary Music).

Emily Peasgood

Emily Peasgood is a composer and sound artist who explores field recording and immersive sonic experiences. In 2023, she led Sounds of the Subaquatic with The Royal Parks, capturing underwater sounds to reveal hidden aquatic ecosystems. In 2024, she spent three months in a motorhome travelling through the Outer Hebrides, recording the landscape’s sounds as material for an album of sonic textures and sharing her journey through weekly YouTube videos. Her work often transforms public spaces, such as I Would Rather Walk With You, a sound installation at Fort Burgoyne that blends archival and field recordings. Through her projects, Emily invites audiences to listen deeply, uncovering the stories and textures embedded in the world around us.

Jason Singh

Jason Singh is sound artist, nature beatboxer, producer, dj, curator, facilitator and performer. Jason’s life and work is rooted in listening. He follows a multi-sensory and cross-species approach to sound and music. His creative output is an exploration of the natural world, voice and a wide range of music technologies. Works includes live performance, immersive installations, studio recordings, music for film and theatre, deep listening and well being experiences, sound walks, broadcasts, music workshops, podcasts, soundtapes and immersive DJ sets. Collaborations and commissions include a diverse range of organisations and artists including BBC, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, V&A Museum, Earthshot Prize, WOMAD, Kew Gardens, , Luke Jerram, National Trust, Tate Britain, Nitin Sawhney, Shabaka Hutchings, Seb Rochford, Graham Massey (808 State), Natacha Atlas, Talvin Singh and Rokia Traore to name just a few. Jason is an associate Soundscape artist with D&B audiotechnik.

Melanie Wilson

Melanie Wilson is a U.K based inter-disciplinary performance maker. Her work centres on the use of sound and the listening experience. As a writer, performer, sound artist and composer Melanie has collaborated with artists and companies across theatre, film, opera, installation, architecture and choreography. She creates sound works for a range of different spaces and places from main house auditoria to headphones. Melanie’s work is developed over long time frames, emerging from deep and sustained research processes and workshops with collaborators. It is mysterious, highly crafted and experiential, and invites the possibility of reconciliation with ambivalent contemporary human experiences.

Lorna Rees

Lorna Rees (Lorna Rees Company/Gobbledegook Theatre) is a multidisciplinary Live Artist who makes innovative work for the outdoors, usually with sound or music at the core. She tours nationally and internationally, with work inspired by Earth Sciences and the environment.

Her major works include performative sound installation Ear Trumpet (2014) which has toured the UK, Europe and South Korea and is still performed a decade after its creation. Cloudscapes (2016) is a headphone piece which tours extensively throughout the UK in sites from beaches to multistorey car parks. Geophonic (2021) is a folk ritual for the rock cycle, an augmented listening experience which has toured rural landscapes (Inside Out Dorset) to the Greenwich Penninsula (GDIF Festival) to volcanic craters (Sismograf Festival, Catalonia). Her new work, CANOPY will comprise 24 sonic seed pods and is an audio installation for forests and urban woodlands.

Lorna trained at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, is Associate Artist for Inside Out Dorset Festival and Co-Chair of Outdoor Arts UK.