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Listening Together symposium: creating social shifts

Lia Mazzari and Samuel Hertz performance sat at laptops with projected image of snowy landscape in background
  • Written byCreative Research in Sound Arts Practice (CRiSAP)
  • Published date 09 October 2025
Lia Mazzari and Samuel Hertz performance sat at laptops with projected image of snowy landscape in background
Lia Mazzari and Samuel Hertz in live performance exploring expansive listening technologies | Photograph: Jess Gell

What does listening together mean as researchers, artists and facilitators?

This year's CRiSAP-hosted Listening Together symposium focused on practices for community-centred listening. We explored how aural practices can create social change and featured discussions and performances by artists and sonic researchers working with communities.

Watch the panel talks on our symposium showcase on Vimeo or read below about our contribution to the wider Sound Arts community.

Symposium topics

  • More-than-data listening to environmental change.
    Samuel Hertz and Lia Mazzari challenged standard data-driven methods of climate study. Listening devices and subjects were interrogated to expose what remains unheard.
  • Ethical issues of working with recorded voices.
    Samantha Dick, Lainy Malkani and Julia Schauerman discussed consent, permission, representation and artistic interpretation of recorded voices.
  • Listening techniques with non-verbal participants.
    Socially engaged artist, Sam Metz, shared listening ‘through the body’. The method is an alternative to ear-based listening to language.
  • Challenging sonic hierarchies within workshop settings.
    Beverley Bennett proposed ‘gatherings’ when working with community groups to make all voices and contributions more evenly heard.
  • Our responsibilities to the silenced and the unheard.
    Cathy Lane questioned how artists and academics might at times be complicit with the repression of marginalised communities.
  • Sam Metz and Hannah Kemp-Welch on stage
    Left to right: Sam Metz and Hannah Kemp Welch | Photograph: Jess Gell
  • Audience member holds mic as they ask a question
    Listening Together Q&A | Photograph: Jess Gell
  • Beverley Bennett speaks into a microphone on stage
    Beverley Bennett | Photograph: Jess Gell
  • Samantha Dick, Julia Schauerman and Lainy Malkani sit on stage doing a panel talk
    From left to right Samantha Dick, Julia Schauerman and Lainy Malkani sit on stage in discussion | Photograph: Jess Gell
We wanted to be able to share research with each other and form a community around quite a specific topic but also to advance the research.

— Hannah Kemp-Welch and Julia Schauerman, organising members and CRiSAP PhD students, LCC
A group of people stand in circle on grass with buildings and trees in the background
Listening Beyond workshop with Blanc Sceol | Photograph: Hannah Kemp-Welch

Attendees took part in a day of workshops, hosted by the UAL Doctoral School. Developing listening practices was the aim. The day began with a session led by artist duo Blanc Sceol, using Pauline Oliveros’ Sonic Meditations. Then artists and researchers investigated what insights sound – or its absence – can offer to listeners.

When it comes to collaborating with others, I’m really interested in people’s stories because... you don’t necessarily get that space to share your story.

— Beverley Bennett, artist-filmmaker
Screen in lecture theatre with overlaid text reading Listening Together
Listening Together | Photograph: Jess Gell
The symposium raised awareness of how practices of listening can attend to the voices of marginalised communities and generate a positive impact by way of collaboration, storytelling and well-being.

— Mark Peter Wright, CRiSAP Director

Extending the discourse

The positive impact of the CRiSAP-hosted Listening Together symposium continues into the Sound Arts research community:

Organisers

CRiSAP PhD students, Hannah Kemp-Welch (LCC) and Julia Schauerman (LCC), along with research students at:

  • Royal Holloway, University of London
  • University of Brighton.

The symposium took place at London College of Communication (LCC) in February 2025, made possible with Techne funding. Around 200 attendees from across the UK and around the world joined to consider ways of listening to, through and with each other.

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