2021’s Community Ideas Fund recipients are Rebecca Jones and Claire Gorman with their collaboration, City Soundscapes! They share more about their project with us.

Each December, our Amps network come together for our annual Forum. Alongside connecting and conversation, everyone can vote on the Community Ideas Fund, which is awarded annually to a new Amps collaboration that will have a positive impact in Dundee—and with 50% of all Amps subscriptions going towards the pot, it’s a Fund that exists thanks to our growing community.

This year, the network awarded the Fund to a project that will open doors to new ways of listening to and engaging with the city’s vibrant sonic environment, encouraging people to make their own sounds and music in the place where they live. In this blog, the team share their inspirations, their passion for the idea, and what they hope to achieve.

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Hello! We are Rebecca Jones and Claire Gorman. Together we have been experimenting with sound and music, and want to share this liberating experience with the Dundee community.

Our project, City Soundscapes, comprises of three parts:

• ‘field kits’, containing a small self-assembly instrument, a booklet of sound games, a booklet of listening games, and a map featuring site-specific sound games to be played in and around the city
• a series of workshops in DIY instrument-making and collective sound-making
• a series of ‘field trips’, providing opportunities for participants to meet up and play site-specific sound and listening games with others around the city

We are both passionate about sharing our enjoyment of playing music and City Soundscapes is the perfect way to make a collaborative project: combining Claire’s background in community music and creative music education with Rebecca’s interests in printmaking and instrument-making.

We want to create opportunities for music-making in the city that are fun, playful and open to all: our aim is to get more people making music in Dundee!

The idea is to guide players on an adventure in listening and sound-making, hopefully opening doors to new ways of listening to, experiencing and interacting creatively with their environment, and interacting creatively with one another. Beyond this, we hope to bring together a new community of sound-makers in Dundee.

What’s the impact of our project?

City Soundscapes will:

• Bring more creativity, fun and play to public spaces in the city
• Allow people to experience familiar environments in new ways
• Invite people to form deeper connections to their surroundings, resulting in a stronger sense of place and belonging
• Bring together a new community of sound-makers

The general benefits of music-making, especially group music-making, are well documented. Through increasing access to music-making, especially for those who might not otherwise consider themselves ‘musical’, our project has the potential to impact participants in the following ways:

• Improved overall sense of wellbeing 
• Greater sense of belonging and connection with others 
• Higher levels of confidence and self-esteem
• Improved mental health

In addition, research shows that sound and listening walks, which will be a key element of the games and field trips, leave participants feeling more “present, calm, united to others and/or environment,… curious and open-minded about their surroundings and eager to continue the listening practice” (Megan Elizabeth Murph). 

Through the three parts of our project, we invite everyone and anyone who’s interested to participate; games will be suitable for children up to people aged 100+, with no previous music-making experience required. We’re both really looking forward to bringing City Soundscapes to life. :-)

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About the Team

Rebecca Jones is an artist, maker and musician. Her visual work uses line, shape and colour to create bold and abstract prints, alongside riso prints, Jesmonite jewellery and homewares. Her music practice varies from classically trained clarinet pieces to electronic music and amplifying household objects to experiment with sound. She plays with a free improvisation group based in Dundee.

Claire Gorman is a community musician, composer and advocate of the Hokey Cokey. She loves playing with other people, writing her own tunes, creating sound-worlds, leading choirs and instigating small musical happenings. Her community music work is all about facilitating joyful music-making experiences and exploring ways of bringing more fun, play and spontaneity into our collective music-making processes and daily lives. Projects include St. Kilda Mailboat Community Choir, Movers and Shakers, and The Outlandish Creatures.

This new collaboration was made possible through our Amps network’s Community Ideas Fund. Everyone in the network can choose which project they’d like to award the Fund to at our annual Amps Forum—find out about the other amazing projects that pitched in 2021. 50% of everyone’s subscription goes towards this cash award each year—join Amps and help us make the Fund bigger and better!