[Commlist] CFP Sonic Engagement: The ethics and aesthetics of community engaged audio practice

*Call for Chapter Contributions *
*Sonic Engagement: The ethics and aesthetics of community engaged audio 
practice.*
*
*
*/Please see below for editorial contacts and instructions for initial 
submissions./*

Edited by Sarah Woodland (Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, University of 
Melbourne, Australia) and Wolfgang Vachon (School of Social and 
Community Services, Humber Institute of Technology and Advanced 
Learning, Canada)
Due for publication in early 2022
*About the book*
This edited collection aims to investigate the use of sound and audio 
production in community engaged participatory arts practice and 
research. The popularity of podcast and audio drama, combined with the 
accessibility and portability of affordable field recording and home 
studio equipment, makes audio a compelling mode of participatory 
creative practice. Working in audio enables a flexible approach to 
participation, where collaborators in sites such as prisons, schools, 
and community settings, can engage in performance and production in 
flexible ways, while learning valuable skills and producing satisfying 
creative outcomes. Audio works also allow projects to reach wider 
audience (and for longer) than an ephemeral performance event, extending 
the potential for diverse perspectives to be heard beyond prison walls, 
across borders, and between different communities and cultures.

The book will map current projects occurring globally and imagine where 
participatory audio creation could lead us. This will be done through a 
series of case study chapters that exemplify community engaged creative 
audio practice; theoretical analyses that illuminate and extend ideas of 
community-created sound practices; and methodological considerations in 
developing and implementing participatory audio-based research.

Chapters will focus on audio and sound based arts practices that are 
undertaken by artists and arts-led researchers in collaboration with (or 
from within) communities and groups. These practices may include: 
Applied audio drama, community engaged podcasting, community engaged 
sound art, sound and verbatim theatre, sound walks, community engaged 
acoustic ecology, digital storytelling, oral history and reminiscence, 
radio drama in health and community development … and more. (Please 
note: Although some of these practices may incorporate music and there 
can be crossover between certain forms of sound art and music, the work 
in this collection will not have music as its primary focus).

The emphasis will be on collaborative creative audio-based work with 
communities towards artistic, social, pedagogical, and/or research outcomes.

*Call for Contributions*
We are seeking contributions from practitioners and researchers that 
consider the ethics, aesthetics, and practice of the work, investigating 
the role of sound in areas such as community building, wellbeing, 
education, and social or environmental justice. Contributors will be 
welcome to submit non-traditional papers, including interview 
transcripts, scripts, and audio files (for inclusion on the online 
Routledge Performance Archive). Contributions will represent a breadth 
of different practices and voices, across diverse community, cultural, 
and global contexts. Authors may consider (but are not limited to):

•What are some of the tensions and possibilities of using sound and 
audio in community engaged arts practice?
•What contribution can creative sound and audio practice make as an 
arts-led, participatory research methodology?
•How might activist approaches to creative sound and audio practice work 
from within communities to resist existing structures of power and 
knowledge? (E.g. how might these approaches contribute to feminist, 
queer, decolonising or antiracist actions and discourses?)
•What contribution can sound and audio technologies make towards 
supporting and strengthening situated, local, or cultural knowledges and 
practices?
•What are the aesthetic implications of using sound and audio in 
community engaged arts practice? How does working in sound/audio impact 
on aesthetic engagement, listening, representation, and cultural production?
•What are the ethical implications of using sound and audio in community 
engaged arts practice? What tensions and opportunities exist in terms of 
access, equity, participation, ownership, and voice?
•What role do creative sound and audio practices play for communities 
responding to contemporary global crises, events, and movements such as 
the climate crisis, migration and displacement, COVID-19 pandemic, Black 
Lives Matter movement, Hong Kong pro-democracy protests, etc.
By focusing on practices that work collaboratively with and within 
diverse communities and groups, the collection will engage with and 
extend fields such as applied theatre, sound art, qualitative inquiry, 
and sound studies to place the emphasis on sound and community engaged 
participatory arts practice. As such, it will provide the first 
extensive analysis of what sound and audio brings to participatory 
interdisciplinary arts-led research and practice, representing a vital 
resource for community arts and performance practice and research in the 
digital age.
Chapters will be maximum 8000 words (including references), shorter 
contributions in the form of provocations, reflections on practice, 
scripts, interviews etc. will be welcome.
*In the first instance, please submit a 300-word proposal and 150-word 
author biographies to the editors by the closing date: Monday 7th 
December 2020 *
*Please also feel free to email us to discuss the volume or your 
proposal prior to submitting. *

Editor contacts:
Sarah Woodland: (sarah.woodland /at/ unimelb.edu.au) 
<mailto:(sarah.woodland /at/ unimelb.edu.au)>
Wolfgang Vachon: (Wolfgang.Vachon /at/ humber.ca) 
<mailto:(Wolfgang.Vachon /at/ humber.ca)>



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