Sound Walk September

Sound Walk September is the yearly global festival celebrating sound walks.

Works created after September 2022 and submitted until 30 September, 2023 will be eligible for the Sound Walk September Awards 2023. Submit your work to walk · listen · create.

When September rolls around, but also at any time before that, you can listen to stories, get closer to nature, travel to far away places, immerse yourself in different cultures, add your voice, record the ambience, learn how to make sound walks, and submit your own work, as well as participate in lively debates, and intimate café conversations. And, share your discoveries with experts from the world of sound walking.

What’s this all about? Check our FAQ and learn about what is a sound walk.

All sound walks created after September 30 the previous year, and all events occurring in September, are eligible for the Sound Walk September Awards. Read up on the judging criteria.

Submit your own events, and check out the full schedule (empty, for now), as well as all walking pieces eligible for the SWS Awards.

Want to go deeper? Check out last year’s open call for Sound Walk September 2022. An Open Call for 2023 will be issued in due course, however, you can apply at any time.

History

In 2017, the Museum of Walking, of which Andrew Stuck is the founder, sought a means to celebrate outdoor audio, geo-located, immersive performances, listening walks and sound walks. He has been podcasting since 2008 as Talking Walking, through which he has interviewed dozens of sound walk creatives who bemoaned the fact that much of their work had a very limited lifespan.

Sound Walk Sunday 2017, beamed a day to promote existing works and encourage these creatives to reprise older walking pieces or make new work. We then collected these works in an open access online database and archive. The event was given a boost by its inauguration in 2017 during the international walking arts encounters Made of Walking in La Romieu, in south west France, with participants from 17 countries, and 6 live sound walks events during the encounters, along with daily public Talking Walking interviews in English and in French during the week long event and podcasts.

Teaming up at the end of 2018 , with Geert Vermeire, the convenor of Made of Walking, writer, curator and a locative multi-media expert with a focus on the environment, and with Babak Fakhamzadeh, an award winning locative app developer, we reprised Sound Walk Sunday in 2019 as a global festival, with key institutional partners in Brazil, Australia, Greece, Spain, Germany and Poland, with the event quickly evolving into a month-long Sound Walk September 2019, becoming not only a showcase for innovation, but also a valued community-building resource, bringing practitioners together, many of whom are remotely working creatives who have previously felt isolated or ‘ploughing a lonely furrow’.  

Due to the pandemic, the 2020 and 2021 editions of Sound Walk September started off on shaky footings, but, with extra experience, a supportive Advisory Board, financial support from multiple partners, and contributions from all over the world, SWS20 and SWS21 were a resounding success.

Participate

We are now accepting submissions for Sound Walk September 2022. You can read our open call, and submit a walking piece or event.

Attend an event

All upcoming events can be found in our events listing. We also have a dedicated event listing, just for SWS22.

Experience a walking piece

Visit our directory of walking pieces to discover sound walks to listen to or follow. Check out the submissions for SWS22.

Media enquiries

A Sound Walk Sunday 2022 Press Kit will be available soon. You can also read the FAQ. You can also join our group on Facebook and talk with other walking artists. Sound Walk September also has dedicated Twitter account.

You can download the logos below and use them as you see fit.

Support us

There’s a range of options available to you as to how you can work with us, including several options for sponsorship and financial support. Read up on how you can work with us.

And, if your heart is truly in the right place, consider becoming a supporting member.

Lots of individuals donate their time and effort to make Sound Walk September a success. If you are interested in becoming more involved or are able to support the project through a financial contribution or by volunteering time and effort, please get in touch.

Use the hashtag #SWSYY, with YY replaced by the last two digits of the year when publishing to social media. So, #SWS22 for Sound Walk September 2022.

How to create your own piece

Want to know how to make sound walk? Go to our FAQ.

Who is deciding on the shortlist?

The shortlist is decided on by a team of reviewers who score submissions against a set of weighted criteria. The highest scoring submissions make it to the shortlist.

Who’s on the team you ask?

Andrew Stuck

Founder Online Jury 2022 Online Jury 2023

Andrew is the founder of the Museum of Walking, created to bring people together and to make and showcase walking pieces and performances. Andrew also is a podcaster, interviewing creative people who use walking as a catalyst for their practice. Talking Wa...

Carlos Queiroz

Online Jury 2023 SWS Award winner

Cultural Geographer. Associate Professor. Interdisciplinary researcher-artist and Aspiring Game Designer Interested in the topics: new urbanisms, everyday life, meaningful human interactions and gamification. __________ Associate Professor III in the...

Dakota LaCroix

Dakota LaCroix

Online Jury 2022 Online Jury 2023

Dakota La Croix’s MERAKI-filled cinematic audio and video creations are sparked by a radical curiosity that seeks to explore storytelling and story listening as an invitation beyond the traditional narrative story structures and styles in hopes of evokin...

David Merleau

David Merleau

Online Jury 2023 SWS Award winner

I am a radio producer and folklore storyteller with a penchant for biology. My works construct collaborations between two creative forces: Technology and Nature. In my locative sound walks I aim to create a positive feedback loop where the site-specific ...

Geert Vermeire

Founder Online Jury 2022 Online Jury 2023

Geert Vermeire is a curator, poet and artist, moving constantly between Greece, Portugal and Brazil, with a focus on spatial writing, locative sound & performance and social practices. He develops collaborative processes, departing from the ethical in...

Babak Fakhamzadeh

Founder Online Jury 2022 Online Jury 2023

Babak was working in ICT4D before it had a name (2001), never really left it, and knows how to throw together a pretty mean combination of a wide array of programming languages, both frontend and backend. He brought photomarathons to Africa (2007) and won ...

Yiannis Christidis

Yiannis Christidis

Online Jury 2022 Online Jury 2023

Yiannis Christidis is a sound anthropologist, ethnographer, and designer. His academic and artistic research focuses on the cultural aspect of sound, its functionality in everyday activities and the relationship between the listeners and their place.

Jonathan Kempster

Online Jury 2022 Online Jury 2023

Freelance Oral Historian and Audio Journalist. BBC Radio News 1986-2021; Imperial War Museum Sound Archive 2016-present. Recorded interviews outdoors during COVID pandemic, some published in the podcast series 'Radio Walks'. Born, raised, and walking...

Molly Wagner

Online Jury 2023

Molly Wagner is an ‘unintentional migrant’ to Australia. She left the USA in 1988 for an anticipated five-year residence in Australia and continues to live there. She experiences a chronic sense of transience and impermanence, and Walking Art gives her...

Ivana Pinna

Ivana Pinna

Online Jury 2022 Online Jury 2023

Multidisciplinary artist, Catalyst at IVYnode, responsible for the planning, implementation, organization of the AiR program, events and curatorial exibition projects. Master Degree in Political Science, ITC Specialist, Yoga Tearcher Certification Trainin...

Renate Zentschnig

Renate Zentschnig

Online Jury 2023

Renate Zentschnig is a graduated theater scientist at the University of Amsterdam and is active as a theater maker since 1992. She obtained her Masters at Dasarts in 2004 and has since then worked as a filmmaker / visual artist / sound artist. The bound...

Richard White

Richard White

Online Jury 2023

UK based walking and multimedia artist/researcher Richard White devises, curates and hosts walks involving listening, sensing, making and asking questions. His participatory performative practice, Walknow, explores accountability and seeks to develop resp...

Stijn Dickel

Stijn Dickel

Online Jury 2022 Online Jury 2023

Stijn Dickel is artistic director of aifoon. aifoon is a Belgian arts organisation focusing on sound & listening art. We examine the movement, dimensions & scopes of sound. We capture sounds and use them as raw materials for artistic productions ...

Help is had

We’re very happy to work with Goldsmiths University and Goodsted, through which we participate in project placements for students. This year, we have the pleasure of working with Michael Woldemariam.

Michael Woldemariam

Past festivals

Mission statement

What we pursue as part of Sound Walk September, we try to do in a way that matches the mission we’ve set for ourselves. Read our mission statement.