In early 2025, staff and students from the Sound and Music Programme, LCC, travelled to the London Wetlands Centre (part of the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT)) to make recordings of the site and its surrounding areas. The project was inspired the long-running SoundLapse project at the Universidad Austral de Chile, where recordings of the wetlands around Valdivia have inspired ecological, educational, and creative research. During the course our project, we met with our counterparts in Chile and learned about their interests, methods, and research goals. We also met with staff and the London Wetlands Centre, and heard about the rapid decline in global wetland environments and their plans to create 100,000 hectares of sustainable wetlands in the UK.

On Friday 9th and Wednesday 14th May we held concerts in London and Valdivia – everyone involved in the project composed a work using sounds of the wetlands. The brief was very open: everyone involved was free to determine their own creative response to the recordings and the broader theme. Together, the works offer myriad perspectives on the sounds of the wetlands, and encourage reflection on our collective responsibility for their conservation and preservation. 

Photo by Ozzy Rodway, 2025