Sonic Rewilding - Sound Matters
Can you hear me? Then listen up! The way we design our land and gardens can be done through the soundscape. Don’t believe me? Take a read or listen to hear more…
I had the privilege of hosting the Beth Chatto Symposium in 2022, Rewilding the Mind. It was a fantastic two days of exploring ideas behind ecological restoration, afforestation, sustainable design, the reconnective and educational value of therapeutic projects, and so much more.
Two days of experts sharing their insights and experiences is always such a joy, and of course meeting new people.
Day one was an impressive line-up of speakers: Dan Pearson, Professor Alastair Driver, Tom Stuart-Smith, Dr Wei Yang, Giacomo Guzzon, and Ton Muller, finishing with Professor Dave Goulson. Thankfully, the team at Beth Chatto provided an amazing evening event, so there was time to distil the knowledge intake from the day over supper and drinks with friends and colleagues.
On day two, our heads were full to brimming with new learning from the day before, and lovely award-winning garden designer Sarah Price started the session. Her gardens have a sublime painterly quality, with beautiful palettes of plants, reflecting the fine artist that she is. Her gentle voice had a meditative quality that we all succumbed to as we floated through her design creations. I had to ground myself and get back to hosting, as next up was Mike Edwards talking to us about Sonic Rewilding (you can watch his talk here).
Talk about energy shift!! His Australian accent, dark sense of humour, and ‘wake up’ energy lifted us from our transcendent state we had nestled into. Mike is a climate change and sustainability expert, who in his career has provided expert advice to the likes of Kofi Annan and President Jimmy Carter. Like many climate and biodiversity stories that are shared, he started with the doom and gloom, and importantly how this made him feel. The anthropogenic world we are living in can take one to dark places. Eco-anxiety, solastalgia, and climate doom are not great conditions to have if you have been inextricably connected to the natural world in your education and career. Mike’s honesty about this was sobering.
During this malaise, whilst out in a bar in Sydney, Australia, he heard this sound which literally transformed his world (if you are reading this, you’re missing out on the sound of a didgeridoo). This sound connected him to the land; that piece of wood created the songs that First Nations Australians had sung for eons telling stories of the land, rivers, forests, and rocks all through the reverberation of sound.
It was at this point in the talk that I began to resonate with the message he was conveying. We are saturated in a digital visual world, with earphones clamped over or stuck in ears funnelling in sound waves that have nothing to do with the natural world. I know for sure my teenage daughter is not listening to the sound of waves on her daily commute. Turn on, tune in, and drop out… maybe Timothy Leary’s phrase needs an update… Tune in, listen in, and act now.
