Throughout our hcmf// Artist of the Month feature on Hayley Suviste, we’ve discovered her work as a sound artist and oral historian, taking an in depth look at recent works such as Edgeland and A Meeting Place. In this feature, Suviste offers insight into her soundwalk work, introducing us to the Soundwalk Collective she founded with Ryan Woods in 2018.
Sound is often overlooked and under-appreciated in our overwhelmingly visual, screen-based society. Founded by myself (Hayley Suviste) and Ryan Woods in 2018, The Manchester Ear aims to get communities involved with listening to the environment on excursions in and around Manchester. We hope to foster greater involvement, understanding and appreciation for these places, exploring ideas of acoustic ecology and deep listening while highlighting the well-being benefits for those taking part in soundwalks.
A soundwalk is ‘a listening exercise that helps us become aware of our immediate acoustic environment. It is also about the aesthetic pleasures of listening. Listening to sounds we might otherwise have missed; listening to the rhythm of sounds; listening for the unique voice of a city’. This description of a soundwalk, and of the act of reorienting how we listen to what’s around us, comes from Hildegard Westerkamp, and informs how we approach our work as a collective.
We are greatly anticipating being able to run soundwalks again when Covid restrictions ease, with some collaborative projects in the pipeline for the summer. Until then, we are working on a podcast series in which we will invite individuals to undertake a soundwalk and discuss their experience with us. You can listen to our introduction to this podcast series here, in which Ryan and I chat about a recent sound walk around Ryebank Fields. In future episodes, we will focus on people in our local community that know a particular space really well, or have expertise around sound or walking, that can provide some interesting insight into sound and our surrounding environments.
Our first guest is Hilary Friend, who worked in Community Adult Education in inner city Manchester from 1985 and used her retirement to learn about music, to experiment with sound art and writing. On her soundwalk she will be retracing places around Hulme that are connected with her past, the places she worked and spent most of her time between 1985-93. She will explore how Hulme’s soundscape has changed over the years and her sonic memories of the place. Hulme is an area of Manchester that has gone through multiple waves of regeneration, so is an interesting place to explore the idea of sonic memories in a constantly changing city.
We featured in Hilary’s podcast ‘Is there grass growing in-between the cobbles?’ back in November 2020, discussing open spaces and access. We feature at 28:29. Find out more about the Manchester Ear via our Website, Instagram, Facebook and Soundcloud.