Last week we were delighted to officially launch the Sounding Change programme and are excited to share a bit more about the reasons we’ve started the programme and introduce the artists we will be working with.
Sounding Change is a new artist residency programme hosted by the Department of Music, currently in a pilot year. It aims to support musicians, composers and artists at pivotal stages of their careers to explore new ideas and develop their practice in our research environment.
We want to ensure that the University of Birmingham Department of Music remains relevant to the wider community of our city and beyond. It is widely recognised that there are deep inequalities in the music industry and those are reflected in Higher Education where there remains an absence of visible role models, negatively impacting perceptions and motivations of underrepresented groups. As a top music department in a Russell Group University, we have a responsibility to directly address the challenges of diversity that the industry is facing and positively impact change.
The Sounding change programme offers us a way to engage meaningfully with artists currently underrepresented in the department offering them a unique opportunity to develop their practice in our resource rich environment whilst also nurturing dialogue and knowledge exchange between artists, researchers and students.
For this year we are delighted to be able to support 3 artists over a 10 month period. After an unprecedented response to the call, with 115 applications, the shortlist was reviewed by a panel consisting of representatives from national organisations including Sound and Music, Britten Pears Arts and Black Lives in Music.
We’re delighted to introduce our three artists:
Azizi Cole
Born and raised in Handsworth with a background in both dance and music, over the last few years Azizi has been developing a creative practice that encompasses knowledge and experience of both art forms with a heavy emphasis on musicality within movement. For his Sounding Change residency he will be developing his compositional and choreographically movement practice Body Clock into its first physical creation as a full body of work, collaborating with brother Xhosa Cole and four other dance artists.
@zidrums
BULLYACHE
Bullyache is a musical duo and dance company created between friends and artists Courtney Dean and Jacob Samuel. They make working class, queer reconstructions of classical texts through the lens of a pop music video. For their Sounding Change residency, they will develop their show called A Good Man is Hard to Find – a reconstruction of the story of Medea: a funeral set inside the sculpture of a pop music video asking how grief is dealt with in a performative landscape. The music moves between electronic instrumentals and traditional pop songs composed by themselves. The residency will allow them to expand their musical knowledge and work with an arranger and a classical ensemble for the first time.
@bullyache_
Mwen
Mwen is a multifaceted artist working as a theatre sound designer and composer, music producer, DJ and live performing artist. Their creative practice blends the realms of music technology, electronic music, live sound and performance. As a queer non-binary artist of East African descent Mwen is interested in artistic works that explore themes of identity, resistance, solidarity and narratives of self. During their Sounding Change Residency
they will incorporate spatial audio into their live performance practice, delving into the possibilities of wearable tech and motion sensors. They aim to expand the boundaries of expression and create new immersive experiences for their audience. @mwengrams www.mwenmusic.com
Each artist will produce a work to be performed in our Spring / Summer series in 2024 and we look forward to sharing the process with you along the way as well as announcing more details about the performances further down the line.
We kicked off the programme on Thursday 6 July by showing the artists around the campus and introducing them to the facilities within the Department of Music that they can make use of, followed by an introduction to university and city contacts at a Launch Party at The Exchange, with a live DJ set by local electronic musician Meesha Fones.