Sounds of Stretton

Wild Earth, in collaboration with the Warwikshire Wildlife Trust, worked with chiuldren and young people in the rural areas of Lillington and Stretton, as a part of the Dunsmore Living Landscape programme. The young people took part in nature awareness and nature connection workshops, and in parallel, created scoundscapes of their neighbourhoods. 

Behind the scenes notes from the production process by musician Luke Weaver: "It was raining outside so we made the most of the weather and placed a hydrophone into a fire pit that had collected a pool of water, which resulted in an amazing natural sound experience. We then created bubble sounds with straws in a bowl of water." "Using sounds collected from various outings on the projects to create a piece of music in Logic Pro. All sounds were sampled using logics EXS24 sampler and all members of the group took turns in creating layers for the song. The group liked the ambient sounds of the rain in the fire pit and combined this with the sound of ambient birdsong. The birdsong had quite a lot of background hum so we used an EQ to soften this."

The young people thoroughly enjoyed the music making sessions. It gave them an opporunity to explore the activities of their local wildlife and the impact of human activities on them.  https://soundcloud.com/wildearthuk/sounds-of-stretton As a part of the umbrella programme, Nature Beats Sonic Signatures, the young people are creating a geodesic dome with naturally sourced materials. This will be launched as an installation in January 2020 at Brandon Marsh Nature Reserve, Coventry.