Submissions are closed

Sound Of The Year

What are the sounds that have defined the year? What are the moments, places, and events that we will remember? What are objects, inventions or moments that made an impact to our listening?

Best Imagined Sound

For this category we’ve partnered with The National Poetry Library to celebrate submissions that describe or depict sounds, rather than sound recordings. These could be poetic, descriptive or conceptual and should encourage an engagement with the imagination.

Best Natural Sound

In this category we are looking to celebrate the sounds around us. From the small sounds found in micro-habitats to the vast sound of glaciers – anything that can be found in the natural environment is eligible!

Best Sound Innovation

In this category we are looking to spotlight new ways of working with sound technologies, practices, programmes and instruments. Prompts to consider: How is technology changing? How does it contribute to our relationship with sound? What is this doing to our ability to create and record sounds?

Composed With Sound

In this category we cleberate compositions that have been made using recorded sound as the primary source material. We aren’t looking for music as such but compositions that either reflect on or augment and piece together a selection of recorded sounds. 

Children’s Category

We are encouraging sounds and recordings that encompass the ideas of play and adventure. What stories you can create with sound alone? What journey can you take the listener on?

Disappearing Sound

Every year, sounds are fading away into the background and slipping from our memories. We are looking to capture and raise awareness of sounds that we may be losing. This could include objects, machines or wildlife but also rituals, languages, music and traditions.

Sound of the City

In this new category, we are celebrating the sounds that define your city and offer a platform to document the ways that cities are changing around the world. What are the soundmarks that are distinct to where you live and identify the quirks of daily life?

Most Unpleasant Sound

In this category we are celebrating unpleasant sounds. This can vary from personal gripes to the more generally accepted unpleasant sounds that exist around us! Previous submissions have included the sounds of bins, tinnitus, screeching animals, sirens etc.