Walking Festival of Sound (2021)

Walking Festival of Sound is a transdisciplinary event and a meeting point for the international network of practitioners and researchers interested in sound and walking. Through diverse events we explore how walking and listening practices can augment and challenge the way we perceive, navigate through, and care for our shared environments. In 2019 the festival took place in two cities, Stockholm, Sweden and Newcastle upon Tyne, the UK. In April 2021, the festival moved to Kraków and Edinburgh, places historically bound by a twin town partnership.

The theme of the 2021 edition revolved around the notion of solidarity. Through diverse events such as soundwalks, workshops, artist walks/talks, and performances, we explored how attentive listening and walking can be practiced as forms of solidarity between generations, cultures, and species. Among numerous conceptual, historical, and spatial avenues, during WFoS 2021 we walked through the history of slavery in Edinburgh, traversed soundscapes of borders, gave hearing to the ecotones surrounding Kraków Zoological garden, traveled though the vanishing soundscapes of the Arctic, let tinnitus rewire our perception, and challenged our humanly routines through active, ecological, and unanticipated listening assignments.

Full program of events can be found here

Walking Festival of Sound 2021 was funded by the Culture of Solidarity grant / European Cultural Fundation.

Founders and curators: Jacek Smolicki & Tim Shaw

Full list of featured artists, activists, and scholars: Sepideh Karami, Ronda Bautista, Jana Winderen, Linda O'Keeffe, Tim Shaw, Barry Truax, Martyna Poznańska, Lisa Williams, Jacek Smolicki, Patrick Farmer, Martin Parker, Cecylia Malik & Małgorzata Grygierczyk (Siostry Rzeki), Elena Biserna, Konrad Gęca & Marcin Barski, Anna Nacher, Agnieszka Reiner, Brett Ascarelli, Jez riley French, Pheobe riley Law, Martin Rodriguez, Sophie Bauer, Niki Matita, Erick Ruiz Arellano, Flora Zajicek, Jayne Dent, Sebastián Concha, Max Wayne