Cities and Memory brings together the worlds of field recording, sound art and composition to create a new form of listening.
The project is founded around the concept of working creatively with sound to explore concepts of place and memory - and to experience the world differently through sound.
Artists work with field recordings as source material and inspiration to create brand new compositions, building an alternative, imagined world of sound to explore.
It is completely open to anyone in the world to take part, by contributing a sound recording or a composition to the project - we have built a global community of more than 2,500 contributing artists. Cities and Memory covers more than 140 countries and territories, with more than 8,000 sounds to explore.
Encompassing field recording, sound art and sound mapping, every location on the Cities and Memory sound map features two sounds: the original field recording of that place, and a reimagined sound that presents that place and time as somewhere else, somewhere new.
The listener can explore places through their actual sounds, to explore reimagined versions of what those places could be – or to flip between the two different sound worlds at leisure.
There are currently more than 8,000 sounds featured on the sound map, spread over more than 140 countries and territories.
The sounds cover parts of the world as diverse as the hubbub of Grand Central station, traditional fishing songs on Lake Turkana, the sound of computer data centres in Birmingham, spiritual temple chanting in New Taipei City or the hum of the vaporetto engines in Venice.
The sonic reimaginings or reinterpretations can take any form, and include musical versions, recomposed ambient music, electronica, vocal cutups, sound art, radio art, abstract compositions and much more.
The project is completely open to submissions from field recordists, sound artists, musicians or anyone with an interest in exploring sound worldwide – more than 2,500 contributors have got involved so far.
We also present major global collaborations exploring an area of sound and place in great detail.
Cities and Memory is open to anyone in the world to submit a field recording, create a composition or join our global community of artists.
Find out how to submit a sound, more about our projects, and how to connect with other artists around the world.
Alongside the sound map at the centre of Cities and Memory, we develop global collaborative sound projects two to three times per year.
These projects take a deep dive into a specific aspect of sound, or use sound as a framing or lens through which to approach an issue or topic.
The topics covered by our sound projects are many and varied.
Among our dozens of projects so far have been the first ever collections of the sounds of protest and social activism, the sounds of human migration, life under the Covid-19 lockdowns, the sounds of the polar seas or the sounds of UNESCO World Heritage sites.
Projects also move away from the sound map, sometimes to new territories as in Space is the Place, interfacing with other disciplines in Sound Photography, the world of literature for Inferno, or investigating creative techniques with Oblique Strategies or Dada Sounds.
Many of our projects have been conducted in partnerships with organisations or brands, using sound to take them to new places.
For example, we have worked with C40 Cities to explore ideas around sustainability in cities; the Alfred Wegener Institute to bring to life the sounds of the polar seas; the University of Oxford to examine how sound can help us to understand human migration; and Exodus Travels to bring sound into their adventure travel experiences.
Got an idea for a new sound project? Please get in touch!
Our sound projects are always open calls for artists and recordists all over the world, and are always announced first via our email list. Signing up to our email list is the best way to make sure you hear about all our project callouts first!
Stuart Fowkes, a sound artist and field recordist from Oxford, UK, is the founder of Cities and Memory.
From a background of more than 15 years using field recordings to give context to musical composition, he created Cities and Memory in 2015.
He has recorded many of the field recordings and produced many of the project’s reimagined sounds, and curates contributions to and partnerships with the project from all over the world.
Cities and Memory has been exhibited in a series of installations both in the UK and internationally, and Stuart has spoken on sound and related issues at conferences across Europe.
Cities and Memory is also an active live performance, performing highlights from the project with live visuals.
Copyright ©2026 Cities and Memory, Oxford, UK. All rights reserved.
"As this wave from memories flows in, the city soaks it up like a sponge and expands. A description of [the city] as it is today should contain all [the city's] past. The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning rods, the poles of the bags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls."
- Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
Grand Prix winner and Coup de Coeur winner, Académie Charles Cros
