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Following the postponement of Timber 2020, the festival organisers are inviting people from across the globe to contribute to a different kind of gathering: an exciting new mass participation audio project called Sounds of the Forest.
Timber, which takes place annually in the heart of the National Forest, celebrates the connection to trees and woodlands through music, art and ideas.
Thanks to the support of Arts Council England, Timber can continue to connect people with trees this year by collecting the sounds of woodlands and forests from all around the world. The goal is to create a beautiful soundmap that brings together aural tones and textures from the world’s woodlands.
‘We’re incredibly excited to launch Sounds of the Forest. While we can’t be together in person in July, this gives us the opportunity to gather in a different way. So, wherever you live across the world, visit a woodland, recharge under the leaves and record your sounds of the forest. If you are out and about, please continue to observe social distancing – we want you all to remain safe.’
ROWAN CANNON & SARAH BIRD
Directors of Wild Rumpus, partners in creating Timber Festival
Everyone is invited to visit their local forest or woodland and record one minute of the sounds they hear.
Full details of how to send in sounds, including technical advice for how to get the best quality recording from a phone, are here.
‘Now more than ever, we want to encourage everyone to experience the transformational power of forests and trees. Recording a sound can share your woodland with the world, giving us an escape into nature and bringing us all closer together.’
JOHN EVERITT
Chief executive of the National Forest Company, partners in creating Timber Festival
At the start of July, on the weekend that Timber would have taken place in the National Forest, the forest soundmap will be released.
The sounds will form an open source library, which anyone will be able to listen to and create from. Selected artists will be responding to the sounds that are gathered, creating music, audio or artwork, to be presented at Timber 2021.
Spanning 200 square miles of the Midlands, the National Forest is the first forest to be created at scale in England for over 1,000 years.
For three days in July, new thinkers, activists, makers, artists, musicians and writers gather to play, provoke and inspire in an exploration of our complex and rewarding relationship with the natural world.
A joyous, reflective festival, Timber gives you the chance to recharge and reconnect with your family, friends, nature and, most importantly, yourself. Timber will next take place 02-04 July 2021.
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