The HomeSounds Show

East Norfolk Coast - LIttle Terns

Welcome Home Everybody! In this episode, Rob, myself and our Sidestrand School group head to the East Norfolk Coast. Keeping the exact location secret for conservation reasons, and in spite of the car park pay machine doing its level best to prevent anyone from spending anytime there, we gathered and laid out our plans. A beach and sea wall walk of about 45 minutes will lead us to a colony of beach nesting little terns. A team of RSPB wardens, permanently sited next to the colony for its protection, will introduce us to these small, chatty, short-tailed and fast flighted birds.  A beautifully warm, sunny and lightly winded day suggested almost perfect conditions await. LINKS www.homesounds.org [http://www.homesounds.org] www.rspb.org.uk [http://www.rspb.org.uk] https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/little-tern www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/little-tern [https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/little-tern] Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-homesounds-show--5490625/support [https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-homesounds-show--5490625/support?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss].

Sheringham Park and Beeston Common - Frogs, Toads and Newts

Welcome Home Everybody! In this episode, Rob leads us on a hunt for Frogs and their copper-eyed cousins Toads. We started with a careful walk through the woods at Sheringham Park, dodging the toads crossing our path that were making safe passage to the ponds where they lay their spawn. Rob tells us that toads squeak, so we stopped to investigate.  From Sheringham we jump back into the bus and make our way to another pond at nearby Beeston Common. An army of frogs await us, their soft croaking alerting us to their presence long before we make out their damp, huddled mass in the bright spring sunshine…. LINKS HomeSounds [https://www.homesounds.org] Sheringham Park [https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/norfolk/sheringham-park] Beeston Common [http://www.beestoncommon.org.uk] Arnold Lobel [https://carlemuseum.org/explore-art/collections/featured-artists/arnold-lobel] HomeSounds Show Supporters Club [https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-homesounds-show--5490625/support]

Ipswich - Seconds of Sound at Suffolk Libraries

Welcome Home Everybody! In 2024 I was privileged and delighted to be appointed ‘Environmentalist in Residence’ for Suffolk Libraries, an independent charity running the public library service for the county of Suffolk in the UK. For this residency I created a project titled ‘Seconds of Sound’ within which lay two main strands of work. The aim of the first was for me to walk between all 45 of Suffolk’s public libraries, recording acoustic habitats and environmental sound on the way and then disseminating these recordings into a collection to be added to the main library catalogue. Reaching between 1 and 3 libraries a week and covering 350 miles in total these walks began in late April and finished in the middle of October. They were surrounded by spring, summer and autumn, visited city, town, and village, farm, field and house, and followed road, track, path, coast, river and railway.  The second strand was to create and deliver public events and activities to engage people in the sounds of the world around them and to encourage Active Environmental Listening. This work involved me leading public soundwalks, giving talks and delivering workshops at libraries across the county, and led to the creation of a unique Nature Silent Disco, the first performance of which took place at the First Light Festival in Lowestoft that year.  This episode of the HomeSounds Show is taken from a conversation I had with Suffolk Libraries children’s librarian Sophie Green in October 2024. This conversation, part of Suffolk Libraries ‘Wild Reads’ initiative, followed an incarnation of the Nature Silent Disco at Ipswich Library that drew on extracts from the Seconds of Sound collection I had created, live environmental sound and elements of bio-sonification.  In our conversation we discuss the aims of the residency, my experiences of walking around Suffolk recording sound, the business of field recording, the HomeSounds project, soundwalking practice, active environmental listening and some of the complexities of human relationships with environmental sound.  At the end of our discussion is an extract of the Nature Silent Disco recorded at Mildenhall Public Library towards the end of my residency. LINKS HomeSounds [https://www.homesounds.org] Seconds of Sound Collection [https://secondsofsound.bandcamp.com] Suffolk Libraries [https://www.suffolklibraries.co.uk] Suffolk Libraries Creative Residencies [https://www.suffolklibraries.co.uk/about/our-work/artist-development/our-creative-residences] HomeSounds Show Supporters Club [https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-homesounds-show--5490625/support]

Sheringham and Felbrigg - Soils and Plants

Welcome Home Everybody! A few weeks ago I managed to get my hands on a new microphone developed by the field recordist and sound artist Jez Riley French. The ecoutic is an adapted version of Jez’s popular c-series contact microphone. Short or long metal probes attach to the original c-series microphone body. These probes allow the microphone to penetrate soils, substrates, plant stems and many other materials, enabling very fine sound within these materials to be detected without the low rumble often associated with this kind of recording.  Excited to try the microphone, and confident that our Sidestrand School group would be equally enthused, Rob and I agreed that trips to the woods at Sheringham Park, and the gardens at Felbrigg Hall might offer good opportunities for fruitful sound exploration. LINKS Sheringham Park [https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/norfolk/sheringham-park] Felbrigg Hall [https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/norfolk/felbrigg-hall-gardens-and-estate] Ecoutic Microphone [https://jezrileyfrench.co.uk/ecoutic-microphone.php] Martin Noble-James [https://soundcloud.com/revolutionarybiscuits] HomeSounds Show Supporters Club [https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-homesounds-show--5490625/support]

West Runton and Happisburgh - Sounds of Coastal Erosion

Welcome Home Everybody! In this episode I, along with Sue Grime from North Norfolk District Council’s Coastwise project, take our Sidestrand school group on a trip to West Runton beach. West Runton forms part of the Deep History Coast, a 22 mile section of North Norfolk shoreline famously home, amongst other ancient treasures, to the remains of a 600,000 year old Steppe Mammoth, the bones of rhinos, hyeanas and bears, chalk rock pools that reveal rich bounties of fossils as the tide goes out, footprints and tools of our ancient human ancestors and, our contemporary focus for this trip, a line of cliffs that are slowly giving themselves to the sea.  Sue and I were then joined by Rob on a second trip to the village of Happisburgh, another section of this deep history coast that is disappearing, though in this instance much more quickly than that of West Runton. Here we explore the beach, the cliff tops and St Mary’s Church, a religious site that has been watching the advancing sea for over 1000 years, and that sometime in the next 100 will be undermined by the waters wearing motion, and the ground’s submission to it.  Our aims were to listen to the cliffs and the rock pools, the sea and the sand, and the soon to be lost topography of these places, and also to explore more generally the physical, human, and of most interest to us, acoustic nature of coastal erosion. LINKS www.homesounds.org [http://www.homesounds.org] Home | Coastwise (north-norfolk.gov.uk) [https://www.north-norfolk.gov.uk/projects/coastwise/] https://www.timeandtidebell.org [https://www.timeandtidebell.org] https://www.visitnorthnorfolk.com/Deep-History-Coast [https://www.visitnorthnorfolk.com/Deep-History-Coast] HomeSounds Show Supporters Club [https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-homesounds-show--5490625/support]