Oxford policy engagement workshop 3: Sonic Storytelling and Storylistening

If stories are powerfully forms of testimony, persuasion, community-building, how can sound and music be mobilized in storytelling to inform and enhanced community participation in policymaking? What makes sound and music distinctive media for sharing stories? And as interest rises in the use of narrative evidence in policymaking, how should we be listening to stories, and what can music and sound research tell us about how to cultivate a discerning ear?

Stories have always been an important part of the dialogue between publics and policymaking. In recent years, though, increased attention has been paid in both academia and the policy sphere to the importance of telling and listening to stories from local communities as a methodology in public policymaking and as a strategy to increase community engagement, cohesion, and agency. Stories carry a powerful affective weight in ways that more traditional datasets do not. Sound and music have particular contributions to make to this affective dimension, while the art of listening will be key to ensuring that stories are used in ways that promote trust.

This workshop brings together researchers across a wide variety of fields, including musicologists, composers, performers, to explore the role of music and creative sonic practices in telling and listening to stories in diverse areas that inform policymaking from community arts and sonic heritage through collective memory and placemaking to sonification in science communication and storylistening in public reason.

The workshop will be divided into two halves, each beginning with short panel presentations before breaking out into group discussion guided by a set of related questions. There will be further opportunity to chat informally with other participants over tea and coffee.

14:00–15:00 Stories, sound, and listening in science communication and public reason

Claire Craig CBE (University of Oxford)
Thomas Gernon (University of Southampton)
Pre-recorded presentation from Miriam Quick (Loud Numbers)
Respondent: Naomi Waltham-Smith (University of Oxford)

Small-group discussion

15:00–15:15 Tea/coffee

15:15–16:25 Sharing stories in sound

Gascia Ouzounian (University of Oxford)
Samantha Dieckmann (University of Oxford)
Noel Lobley (University of Virginia)
Laudan Nooshin (City, University of London/Charcoalblue)

Small-group discussion

16:25–16:30 Closing and next steps

In the first half we will hear from two scientists who have longstanding interests in enhancing science communication. Claire Craig, a geophysicist with extensive public policy experience who has served as director of Government Office for Science and Chief Science Policy Officer at the Royal Society, will talk about the idea of “storylistening” and the urgent need to take stories seriously in order to improve public reasoning and to listen to them in ways that enable narrative evidence to be effective and robust. Thomas Gernon, an earth and environmental scientist who is passionate about making complex scientific data more accessible and engaging to public, industry, and policy stakeholders, will talk about his recent study focussed on enhancing Earth science communication through data sonification and his experience working with a sci-art outreach project that frequently works with NASA. A pre-recorded presentation from journalist, artist, and musician Miriam Quick of the data sonification studio Loud Numbers will round out the panel.

The second half will feature panel presentations from a variety of music and sound researchers who have used creative approaches to sound in community engagement across a range of issues. Sonic theorist and practitioner Gascia Ouzounian will present her work on shifting policy and planning away from noise control towards critically informed and creative approaches to sound in architecture and urban design. Samantha Dieckmann, whose work sits at the nexus of ethnomusicology and music education, will talk about how community music and arts projects can help make sense of and narratize experiences of displacement, migration, resettlement and intercultural relations.Ethnomusicologist, sound curator, and artist Noel Lobley will discuss his collaborative work with an intergenerational arts activist community in, South Africa activating the sounds and buried histories of colonial archives to occupy spaces and share stories advocating for local ownership of land, economies, language and histories. Laudan Nooshin, whose work spans sound in urban and heritage spaces to popular Iranian musics, will present a recent collaboration with a theatre group in Tehran which used an app-based soundwalk to facilitate participatory sonic storytelling as a way to re-imagine the historical city.

The workshop takes place on Thursday 18 July between 14:00 and 16:30 at the Faculty of Music on St Aldates in Oxford.

To attend, please email Naomi Waltham-Smith no later than noon on Monday 15 July.