Spring Project – help us remix the world

Twice per year, we unlock the Cities and Memory vaults and invite you inside to help us remix the world, one sound at a time – this is the Spring Project open call!

If you’d like to reimagine a sound to be part of the Cities and Memory global sound map, this is a great chance to get involved with the project.

Every composition is added to our global sound map, covering 113 countries and territories, is published on our podcast with thousands of subscribers across Spotify, Apple Podcasts and all the usual places, and is also added to the British Library’s digital archive.

In our latest open call, we’re looking for musicians and sound artists to take a field recording from their database and use it to create a brand new composition, reimagining that location in the process. 

If you’d like to get involved, just send us an email, and we will reply with access to our global database of field recordings for you to choose from.

If you’ve not taken part in Cities and Memory before, please include a link to some of your audio work/music when you get in touch.

There are dozens of fantastic sounds from all over the world available in the Spring 23 batch, including:

• Soundscapes from inside the ancient temples of Egypt 🇪🇬
• Muezzin calls from the streets of Tunisia 🇹🇳
• Muay Thai boxing fights and night markets in Thailand 🇹🇭
• Roaring sports crowds from London 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿
• Church bells ringing out across the rooftops in Italy 🇮🇹
• Insects and amphibians in wetland soundscapes from Ghana 🇬🇭
• Busy market life from Rwanda  🇷🇼 and Burkina Faso 🇧🇫
• Beautiful bird species recorded across Bermuda 🇧🇲
• Urban soundscapes and street life from cities spanning the globe 🌎

Here’s how the process works:

1. Email us your details, and we will send you access to a) a folder of available field recordings and b) a spreadsheet with more details about each sounds, including country, category, keywords and description.
2. Reply with your selection of one field recording you’d like to work with – please note you can only choose from the recordings marked as “available”. Alternatively we can happily choose a sound for you at random if you’d rather work with something picked out by chance.
3. We will reply letting you know if that sound is still available and allocate it to you.
4. You will then have until the end of April to submit a composition for inclusion in the project.

Here’s what we need from your composition:

1. It must be supplied as a WAV file up to a maximum of 20 minutes long.
2. It must contain your chosen field recording, or elements of it – whether processed/effected or not.
3. Otherwise it’s a free composition, so it’s up to how the field recording inspires you – and you can of course bring in other instruments, samples, voices, percussion or anything else as you’d like.
4. We’ll also need a title for your composition and a short description of your process/how you used the sound/the inspiration behind your piece. This is essential for our sound map and podcast episode descriptions etc.

We’re looking forward to hearing from you!