Sound Walk September 2020

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

After early worries due to the COVID pandemic, we were very excited to announce a varied programme of events taking place around the world during Sound Walk September 2020. Under the constraints of the pandemic, we saw outdoor experiences for individuals, as well as on-line talk shops, as well as interactive collaborative projects which everyone was able to contribute to during the month.

Participants were able to listen to stories, get closer to nature, travel to far away places, immerse themselves in different cultures, add their own voice, record the ambience, learn how to make sound walks, and submit their own work, as well as participate in lively debates, and intimate café conversations. And, to share your discoveries with experts from the world of sound walking.

We facilitated online collaboration through 30 Days of Walking and Shorelines. Check them out to see what participants contributed.

Sound Walk September 2020 in numbers:

• 65 eligible walking pieces for the SWS Awards.
• 49 events organised by the global community.
• 2 collaborative projects, organised by WLC, with a total of over 150 submissions.
• Contributions from all non-arctic continents.
• Over 250 tickets issued for the online events hosted by WLC.
• 2 winners, 2 honourable mentions, and a special mention, 13 shortlisted works.

Achievements from throughout the year:

• We have extensively grown our library of walking pieces.
• We’ve integrated listings from Echoes, Soundtrails and Guidemate.
• We’ve completely updated the look and feel of our website.
• We started publishing a weekly automated mailing list with the most relevant recent updates.
• We started publishing on Instagram. We’re still not sure if it’s worth it.
• We grew membership to over 1000 individuals.

Help was had

We were happy and lucky to be able to rely on the volunteer work provided by Liam Forrest and James Luce. Thanks!

Liam Forrest

 

James Luce

 

A massive thanks to the SWS Advisory Board, who were key in identifying the winners and honourable mentions for the SWS20 Awards.