Field recordings and compositions submitted to Cities and Memory are shared in several ways:

1. Inclusion on our global sound map, the centrepiece of the project as we remix the world, one sound at a time.

2. Inclusion as an episode of our podcast, which has thousands of subscribers across Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and all other major on-demand audio platforms.

3. Selected sounds on our podcast are automatically archived by the British Library, and become part of the British Library’s permanent digital archive. For more on this, read this article.

4. Selected highlights from our individual projects are also shared on our compilation albums, all available as free/pay-what-you-like downloads from our Bandcamp page.

The sounds recorded and reimagined for Cities and Memory and presented on the sound map, on our podcast and in our compilation albums are licensed (non-exclusively) for use in the Cities and Memory project by individual contributors – every contributor retains the original copyright of their sound, and can of course present those sounds elsewhere too.

The sounds in our database and on our sound map may not be used for purposes outside of the Cities and Memory project in its various forms without the explicit permission of each individual copyright holder.

We will never supply your recordings or compositions for any commercial use, or for any non-Cities and Memory purposes, to any third party.

If you’d like to discuss a collaboration, project or partnership with Cities and Memory, please do get in touch.

Field recordings are only added to the sound map once they have been reimagined by an artist – sounds are uploaded in pairs of one field recording and one composition.

When you submit a field recording, it will be added to our sound database (or to the collection for a specific project) and offered up to artists.

Depending on whether an artist selects your recording to work with, and which projects are active at the time, it could therefore be anything from a few days up to a few months before your sound appears in the project.

Field recordings are not uploaded on their own to the sound map, which is why there can be a delay between submitting a recording and seeing it appear.

We are always open to ideas for new projects or partnerships, so please get in touch!

We’ve worked with a large number of organisations as diverse as scientific institutes, museums and amusement parks on partnerships, collaborations and commissions, and are always interested in discussing new ideas.

You can read more about our previous partnerships on this page and if you’d like to talk about working with us, please get in touch.

We are also available for field recording, composition or sound design commissions.

As one of the world’s largest sound projects, one of the questions we get asked most often is “how are you funded?”. The simple answer is – “we’re not”.

Cities and Memory is a passion project entirely run by me (just one person! 😀) out of my love for exploring and sharing the possibilities of sound and field recording all over the world.

The project and our callouts are free for all and always will be – but it would mean a lot if you considered supporting us, whether through a one-off donation or the cost of a coffee per month.

This would be an invaluable help to keep Cities and Memory going with our hosting, web costs and all the behind-the-scenes hard work that has kept the project running – and growing – ever since 2015.

We’ve had more than 2,000 contributors so far, who have created compositions or submitted field recordings to the project (or both). Contributors come from all walks of life – from professional sound recordists, composers and sound artists to amateur musicians and hobbyist sound recordists and anyone with a curiosity for and interest in sound.

They’ve come from as far afield as the USA, the Arctic Circle, Australia, Japan, South Africa – all over the world!

You can meet some of the contributors in more detail in our Artist Spotlight series, and there’s a list of contributors over here.

We offer up new field recordings from our database for free use as part of the Cities and Memory project, but they may not be used for other purposes without explicit and agreed permission from the artists in question.

If you’d like to partner with us in to use any of our sounds (field recordings or compositions) for any purpose, please get in touch.

Our logo is based on a section of street map layout from Venice, at the precise point at which our first field recording from the city was made and added to the global sound map back in 2015.

The main brand colour echoes the traditional Venetian red to strengthen the connection between the project and Venice as its spiritual home, and as a city that sounds uniquely like no other.

Elsewhere, sections and elements from the logo are broken apart and rearranged as a nod to the project’s core concept of remixing the world, one sound at a time.

Yes! We can take on your field recordings and produce a “memory” version ourselves or pass them on to our community of sound artists, so please do submit them.

However, we do have a queue of sounds waiting to be reimagined, so if you do submit a field recording on its own, it might be a little while before an artist creates a new piece from it.

Full details are here, but in brief we need:

1. The location of the sound, as precisely as possible. If you can provide a map/lat-long reference, then great – if not, then a link on Google maps, for instance, or a fairly detailed description will do (e.g. “the corner of X street and Y street in Z town”).

2. Accompanying information – at least a sentence or two – about your recording/reimagined piece. For instance, this can be a description of what’s going on in the recording, or of your approach to the reimagined piece. Reading about how the sounds were created and recorded is really valued by our listeners, especially on the podcast!

3. What would also be great – but isn’t 100% necessary – is a photo of the location, which really helps to get the sense of place across and is used across our sound map, podcast and so on.

Field recordings submitted to the project must be recordings of one place at one time – we do not accept composites or edits of multiple locations in the same sound file, or edits of the same place at different times in the same sound file.

If you’d like to submit multiple locations, or the same location at different times, please do so with individual, separate sound files.

Recordings can be edited for quality, and you can apply editing techniques like EQ, repair and so on to them – but recordings must not be otherwise effected or processed (e.g. with additions made to them, or with additive effects like reverb, delay etc.).

In short, we’re looking for “real”, documentary recordings of locations around the world – which will then be reimagined separately afterwards.

Yes! While most of the sounds have been recorded on high-quality equipment, many of the sounds on the site were recorded by simple mobile phone recording apps, which can produce good quality recordings in the right conditions.

Photographers often say that the best camera is the one you have on you at the time – it’s the same for field recording. Cities and Memory is completely open to anyone who wants to take part, and we don’t need you to have professional-level equipment to do so.

Of course! The more comprehensive a sound map of an area, the better! And places change over time, so sounds recorded in the exact same place at different times are very valuable too.

Reimagining a sound is creating a composition using a field recording as source material and inspiration.

There are many approaches you can take – the only “rule” is that your composition must contains the original field recording, or some element of it, either “as is” or filtered, effected or used musically. You can be as simple or as complex as you like, and across the project there is an incredible range of creative approaches.

Musical, experimental, subtle or abstract – it’s your reimagining of the sound that’s important. There’s a good summary of some of the many creative approaches other artists have taken to reimagining sounds here. The most important thing is to reflect your own personal interpretation of that sound.

Yes – drop us a line, and we can send over a link to a database of field recordings from our bank of recordings for you to reinterpret.

The only time limit is that clips and compositions are limited to a minimum of one minute and a maximum of 20 minutes each. We think this is long enough to give you enough scope to work with for both field recording and reimagined sound, and a minimum of one minutes gives time for the listener to immerse themselves in the sound.

Cities and Memory is an ongoing, open work that has been running since 2015, so there’s no deadline for submissions.

We do run individual projects two to three times per year, which do have deadlines attached to them, but you can always submit sounds to the overall Cities and Memory sound map.

No, we do not accept contributions made entirely or partially by or with the aid of AI. The compositions on Cities and Memory are a reflection of human, personal and emotional responses to field recordings, and we believe there is something special in the human artistic responses we have lovingly curated since 2015.

We also do not accept accompanying text for contributions that has been written by AI.