Galen Koch, with Celia Morton and Annika Ross, created The First Coast’s Stonington Soundwalk, taking the listener on a walk past old sardine factories and music halls, neighborhoods and town piers, featuring the stories of local residents, both past and present.

This work is one of the shortlisted pieces for the Sound Walk September Awards 2025. 
Below, Galen reflects on her work.

I’ve been creating audio stories, exhibits, and soundwalks for twelve years. In that time, I’ve rarely made anything personal. But in 2023, with hundreds of hours of audio to sort through and over thirty years of personal history and memories I set out to create a sound walk about one of the most challenging subjects, my own hometown. 

The Stonington Soundwalk is part of a collection of audio projects that dot Maine’s northeasternmost coastline (colloquially referred to as “Downeast”). In 2016, I started The First Coast, a project aimed at documenting and exhibiting stories from rural Maine fishing villages. In a renovated 1976 Airstream trailer, I would post up in a town for one month to meet with and interview local residents. Those interviews became the basis for soundwalks and audio exhibits created for each location. There are soundwalks and multimedia exhibits in Lubec, Jonesport, Beals Island, Bar Harbor, and Stonington. 

When I launched The First Coast, the first town I visited was the one I was born and raised in, Stonington, Maine. Stonington abuts the village of Deer Isle, the two towns share a geographic boundary, a series of islands linked to the mainland by a towering green suspension bridge, and they are deeply interconnected communities. In 2018, I parked the Airstream trailer in my parent’s backyard and began interviewing residents. In the span of one month, I conducted over 40 oral history interviews and collected 95 archival interviews from the local historical society. Then, for the next four years, I procrastinated. How could I ever produce a soundwalk about a place I knew so intimately?

I began the process of creating the Stonington Soundwalk with a few simple ideas: I knew the route, it was a route I had walked for 35 years; I knew the sounds, they were the sounds of home; and I knew the people, their memories were memories I shared, their stories were stories I had heard around the dinner table or in the local diner. The structure of the piece was predetermined by the route but choosing what, and who, to include felt impossible. Of the hundreds of hours of tape I had recorded or listened to, each story was meaningful and each voice the voice of someone I knew.

In 2023, I was working at College of the Atlantic, a small liberal arts college in Bar Harbor, Maine. Two of my audio students, Celia Morton and Annika Ross, expressed interest in producing a multimedia exhibit for The First Coast and embarked on a year-long independent study under my guidance to create the Deer Isle and Stonington Exhibit. The exhibit is a series of sister stories to the Stonington Soundwalk. With this development, I suddenly found the missing piece in production: Two sets of “outsider ears.” 

Celia and Annika listened to each interview from my recordings and the archives, compiling a document of 145 pages of interview selects. What emerged from their selections surprised me. They were drawn to the most intimate moments in the interviews, like when Alice Spencer offered me a slice of cake in our eighth hour of recording or the love story between Rose and Andy Gove. These were not the most political or sensational moments in the audio, but the moments that shared a sense of community and belonging. They were bits of tape that I was anxious to use but, with the perspective of these two students, I realized these moments set the collection apart.

This collaborative process with Celia and Annika determined the backbone for the Stonington Soundwalk. There are stories of bygone industries, of the changing landscape, of love and community and music. The sound walk can be enjoyed by lifelong Stonington residents or by newcomers, it is accessible year-round through postcard maps in the local cafe and town office. 

Producing the Stonington Soundwalk was an exercise in imagination. It was an opportunity for me to build soundscapes and conjure scenes from memories and to transport the listener through my own experience of home. With each passing year, the sound walk takes on new meaning – beloved community members pass away, industries fade, and the sounds of home disappear or change. The Stonington Soundwalk’s strength is that it is so personal. The intimate stories bring to life a history and a sense of place that, I hope, will always feel relevant. 

The winner and honourable mention of the SWS Awards 2025 will be announced around the start of 2026.