It’s time for our traditional end of year lookback, and as befits our tenth anniversary year, the last 12 months have been BUSY across the Cities and Memory community.
Take a look at our review of 2025 in sound, starting with the first three months of the year, which we’ve arbitrarily labelled “spring” despite the meteorological inconsistencies contained therein.
SPRING
First up, we announced the call for artist for Sonic Heritage, our project to explore and reimagine the sounds of UNESCO World Heritage sites and items of intangible heritage. The response was amazing, and allowed us to put together the biggest ever Cities and Memory project launch – more of which shortly.
We also kicked off Observatory Station, our collaboration with Miyu Hosoi at the Barbican Centre, inviting field recordists to submit their favourite sounds to be part of the amazing Feel The Sound exhibition.
Elsewhere, our traditional twice-yearly sonic bonanza took shape in the form of the 2025 Spring Project, with 214 new additions to the sound map, which you can explore here.
Finally, we teamed up with the Sound of the Year Awards to present the Sound of the City category, inviting submissions of field recordings from urban spaces.
SUMMER
Sonic Heritage launched with sounds from 270 World Heritage sites, and was acclaimed around the world, with pieces in The Guardian, The Times, BBC radio, NTS radio and two amazing pieces of TV coverage from PBS and French TV, the latter of which coined our phrase of the year, “nerditude sonore”.
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We launched Observatory Station, which presented sounds from across the Cities and Memory community to visitors at the Barbican for three months over the summer as part of their celebration of sound in all its forms.
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We were also lining up our next projects, with the callout for A Century of Sounds (with the Pitt Rivers Museum) going out to artists, and the call for pieces for our Gaza fundraising album series, Echoes for Palestine.
A quick trip to Bremen saw us taking in a new installation of our Polar Sounds project at the Klimahaus museum in Bremerhaven, as well as doing a spot of field recording across Bremen, Hannover and Oldenburg.
Finally, the first Cities and Memory live show of the year was in London for the Echoes for Palestine benefit show, also featuring regular contributors Rafael Diogo and Karhide.
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AUTUMN
We also released The First Ten Years: Field Recordings, a compilation of some of the most beautiful – and dramatic – sounds submitted since 2015, and a very special album for me. Cities and Memory field recordings: 2015-2025 is a memento and a reminder of my own sound recording journey, and of some of the moments that I’ve enjoyed the most with a microphone in my hands. Each of these recordings conjures up a specific set of memories for me that are as vivid now as the day I pressed “record”.
Marking the tenth anniversary, we took a trip to Oslo to perform a short residency of live shows and present the project – including a special live collaboration with Atul Giri, who guested on guitar and glockenspiel for one night of the shows.
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The trip also involved collecting some great recordings from around Oslo to go into this year’s Autumn Project.
The Century of Sounds project, which will be our first major launch of 2026, moved to its next stage, with around 30 artists travelling to the Pitt Rivers Museum to meet in person, learn more about the museum’s sound collections, and get inspired for their creative work ahead. It was a very special day to meet so many artists from the Cities and Memory community in person – and hopefully more to come at our launch event in February.
Finally, we launched a new feature in Artist Spotlight, a series of interviews in which we discover more about the various artists all over the world who are part of the project – you can read the full collection of interviews here.
WINTER
A special note for the Cities and Memory website at this point – as well as a complete redesign for our tenth birthday, we added the two most-requested features to help you explore and find sounds more easily.
Our new on-site sound player means you can search for any artist name, place name or keyword and find all the sounds instantly, and on the sound map you can now share a link out to a specific recording/composition with its own bespoke link – making it much easier to share your work as a contributor.
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Our final project callout for the year was Flow, reimagining the life of a river with the University of Padova and the University of Würzburg – and we rounded off 2025 with our Sounds of the Year and Field Recordings of the Year releases, a great way to sum up all the amazing things we’ve listened to over the last 12 months.
INTO 2026...
Our Century of Sounds project launches in late February, and there’s a live event in Oxford on Friday 27 February – we’d love to see as many of you there as possible.
And we have a VERY special project lined up to bring you in January too… 👀
Thank you so much to everyone who’s made this such a special year, by composing a piece, submitting a recording, listening to any of our sounds or offering a kind word about the project – 2025 has been a humbling and amazing experience. Here’s to a creative 2026 together!
