I secured funding in 2024 through Arts Council England's Developing Your Creative Practice to devise and run a community project to explore how and why the sounds of our village have changed over the last century, and to record what sounds we hear in Holbrook today.

I worked with local residents of all ages to collate a 'sound encyclopedia' of our favourite village sounds. The sounds were suggested through online groups, attending village meetings and through informal conversations with people as I walked and listened to the landscape. These sounds were then either recorded where they currently exist, or recreated as foley sounds.

The result was a series of community sound walks, a site specific performance in the village hall, a podcast of field recordings, a geolocated sound walk and an experimental album. One of my recordings now travels the world as part of Miyu Hosoi's 'Observatory Station' sound installation.

The project allowed me to experiment with data sonification, and to a develop a new compositional technique that uses cartographical information for compositional arrangements during live performance.

Three live performances linked to the project have so far taken place: one in 2024 as part of the Sluice 'Vernacular' Expo in Colchester, one commissioned by SPILL in May 2025 at a sold out event in Ipswich, and one in November 2025 for the Holbrook Society presenting my work to a community group of local residents.

Each performance included a level audience participation through attendees selecting a site specific foraged item (or by bringing an item with them), with these being used to make sound during the performance..

Each element of the project questioned how capitalism, globalisation and climate change has altered the sound of the village: how in a little more than a century we went from a self-sufficient community hearing the call of the corncrake, to all-consuming individuals soothed by the drone of hot tubs. These themes were discussed in post performance Q+A sessions and at the local Climate Action group.

I continue to collect new and old sounds, and now also work with the Village Recorder to record and archive the oral recollections of local residents.

The project is ongoing.