At the end of last year I interviewed Emma Welton. A musician who lives locally to me. She discusses listening as a nature connection practice.
Active listening can help us develop a deep empathic relationship with the natural world.
Discover how to identify trees by sound, why we need to create botanical sound walks and more.
If you have followed my work for any length of time, you will know that I teach sensory engagement with plants, yet the practices I teach can be applied to the whole of the natural world.
Show notes
- Emma Welton’s website
- Emma on Facebook
- Emma on Twitter
- For more about the enormous array of activity around Sound Walking, have a look at Walk – Listen – Create and their ‘Sound Walk September’ awards
About Emma Welton
Emma Welton studied music at Manchester and York Universities. She performs on violin with Lavolta ensemble, Exeter Contemporary Sounds, Icebreaker and in other groups and on all sorts of platforms. She co-curates with Tony Whitehead A Quiet Night In, creating performances of quiet contemporary music otherwise neither performed nor widely-known in Devon and providing a context for the exploration of the creative possibilities in quiet/silence.
She is a Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra musician, touring the south west with BSO chamber groups, and co-leading with Hugh Nankivell BSO’s Exeter Family Orchestra. She is an activist composer whose practice is driven by the climate emergency and our place in it, combining recordings, live instruments and tools/objects, and sometimes eliciting audience participation. In 2019 she created new pieces for Scare the Horses, the Agatha Christie International Festival,
music for the film Ouroboros Dumnonii and a living musical sculpture for Torbay’s Eyeview festival.
Since all her live musical work was suspended in March 2020 she has been developing a practice derived from listening to her habitat. This has led to two strands of work: Music in the Garden and Exeter Sound Walks. Exeter Sound Walks have been shortlisted for a ‘Sound Walk September 2020’ award, a project of Walk. Listen. Create.