JoAnn Kuchera-Morin on the AlloSphere (mp3)

Janet Baker speech recognition pioneer (mp3)

Charlie Morrow”s audio history of the world opens in London (mp3)

Most people, and most organisations, underestimate the importance of sound. It’s time for us all to take responsibility for the sound we make, and the sound we surround ourselves with. In our daily lives we rarely encounter one sound in isolation; usually there are multiple sounds firing off all around us. The entirety of the sound in any one location is a soundscape. The word was coined by Canadian sound author and composer R. Murray Schafer. His concept of a soundscape was essentially an auditory

A survey reported recently in the UK Daily Mail (Nov 4) suggested that 50% of shoppers leave stores because of the background music playing. This finding is a welcome antidote to a lot of often poorly-designed research suggesting that music is universally beneficial and so should be deployed absolutely everywhere. That is obviously not true, and yet the thesis sadly seems to have taken root in the minds of many retailers. I suspect that the explosion of mindless music in public places is fuelled less by

Marwoods FINAL.pdf Download this file I’m excited to be part of the amazing White Night event, which lights up the streets of Brighton all night this coming Saturday, partly to acknowledge the Autumn Equinox, when the clocks go back and we get an extra hour to enjoy the hundreds of events… and partly just to connect and be fascinated by a wealth of happenings, performances, installations and (in my case) café talks. There’s a parallel event in Amiens, and they share a strong theme around

Felix Zenger, beatboxer extraordinaire (mp3)

More suggestions on practical exercises to teach listening skills are in a nice blog post from Teacher’s Tonic. I am in the process of investigating the best way to set up a web resource for educators to share with each ideas, experiences and suggestions so that we can establish a body of evidence and some best practice guidelines. At the moment we’re thinking a Google Group. I am trying to capture email addresses for all the educators who are contacting me through my blog, email,

Jazz musician and teacher Huw Lloyd has sent me this set of fun listening games taken from the world of improv theatre. He uses them to help musicians listen better, but we can probably all use them! I think some of these would nicely leaven the rather more serious listening exercises I have already posted here. Keep ‘em coming!

Following my TED talk on conscious listening and why it should be taught in schools, I’ve had enquiries from educators about how this can be done. Here are some practical suggestions. There are many more ideas and I would love to hear what people all over the world come up with. I plan to start a new web resource for listing in schools, probably a blog where people can post their experiences and ideas. Silence Help them to experience this possibly for the first time