People

Martin's rich and varied professional career has included 9 years as a tutor and music teacher educator for Access Creative College, project co-ordinator for Norwich community education charity Future Projects, apprentice scheme co-ordinator for Aldeburgh Young Musicians, administrator for Aldeburgh Music's Fasterthansound programme, 9 years as a house-parent, music teacher and community member at A.S. Neill's Summerhill School, 6 years as founder/director of Recast Music Education CIC, and 25 years as a freelance teacher and workshop leader.

​Martin completed his Certificate in Education at City College Norwich and a Masters in Applied Music Education at Roehamapton University. This was followed by a Post-Graduate Diploma in Practitioner Research at University College London: Institute of Education where his work explored democratic music education and music-making with children in care. 

In September 2021 Martin joined the faculty of the School of Education and Lifelong Learning at the University of East Anglia where amongst other teaching he leads a module in Environmental Education and Outdoor Learning.

In April 2024 Martin became Environmentalist in Residence for Suffolk Libraries, curating a series of soundwalks, audio recordings and activities centred around environmental listening at libraries across the county.

Oliver is an artist and producer with a passion for experimentation, accessibility and inclusion. As Programme Manager at Norwich-based charity, Musical Keys Oliver is leads design and delivery of many bespoke groups and projects for people of all ages, with disabilities and additional needs.

As founder of Eastern Ear Oliver has produced a range of specialist workshops for targeted groups, alongside leading large ensemble free improvisation workshops, producing exhibitions and installations and programming the live concert series Plink Plonk.

​Oliver is also a founder of Yarmonics, the annual Great Yarmouth based festival of sonic art and new music that provides ambitious site-specific performances, participatory opportunities, talks and installations.  A career in participatory and experimental arts has also included working in participation and engagement at the Norfolk & Norfolk Festival and managing an independent arts venue in Brighton.

As an active sound artist interested in the practice of listening, Oliver has had installation and recorded work shown across Europe, and is an associate artist at SCVA. He performs improvised electroacoustic music in a number of guises, most commonly in the duo Sudden Amusements. Oliver has been using field recording in his professional and artistic work since it became available to the consumer market, the most recent example being the podcast series ‘Ear of the Edgeland’.

Dr. Leah Barclay is an Australian sound artist, composer and researcher working at the intersection of art, science and technology. She specialises in electroacoustic music, acoustic ecology and emerging fields of biology exploring environmental patterns and changes through sound. Her work has been commissioned, performed and exhibited to wide acclaim across Australia, New Zealand, Canada, USA, Peru, Colombia, Europe, India, South Africa, China and Korea by organisations including UNESCO, Ear to the Earth, Streaming Museum, Al Gore’s Climate Reality and the IUCN. She has been the recipient of numerous awards and has directed and curated interdisciplinary projects across the Asia-Pacific and USA.​

Leah composes complex sonic environments that draw attention to changing climates and fragile ecosystems. These works are realised through live performances, interactive installations and site-specific interventions drawing on environmental field recordings, data sonification, live streams and immersive sound diffusion. Recent examples include augmented reality sound walks exploring the cultural and biological diversity of river systems and Rainforest Listening, a virtual canopy that transforms iconic urban locations into the Amazon Rainforest. Rainforest Listening launched in Times Square for Climate Week NYC 2015 and was a featured cultural event for COP21 in Paris where each observatory platform of the Eiffel Tower was transformed into the four distinct layers of tropical rainforest vegetation through immersive soundscapes accessed through mobile phones.

Leah’s work is multi-platform in nature and involves long-term engagement with communities across the globe ranging from remote river systems in South India to pacific island communities in Vanuatu. She leads several large-scale research projects including Biosphere Soundscapes, an interdisciplinary venture exploring the changing soundscapes of UNESCO Biosphere Reserves across the world and River Listening, which examines the creative possibilities of aquatic bioacoustics in collaboration with the Australian Rivers Institute.

Leah’s diverse creative practice has resulted in a career where she works as a researcher, artist, consultant and educator with various organisations and institutions. These include designing immersive education programs for UNESCO, directing large-scale interdisciplinary research projects for major universities across Australia and the USA and facilitating partnerships between communities, NGOs and government to explore creative approaches to climate action. She regularly guest lectures for international universities including NYU, Brown University and The Art Institute of Chicago.

Leah is the president of the Australian Forum for Acoustic Ecology, the vice-president of the World Forum of Acoustic Ecology and serves on the board of a range of arts and environmental organisations. She is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at the Queensland Conservatorium Research Centre where she is leading a portfolio of research exploring the value of acoustic ecology as a socially engaged, accessible, interdisciplinary field that can inspire communities across the world to listen to the environment.

Mark Cocker is an author of creative non-fiction. He is also a naturalist and environmental tutor, who writes and broadcasts on nature and wildlife in a variety of national media. In 2018 he released a new book Our Place (Cape), on the fate of British nature in the twentieth century, and completed 30 years as a Guardian country diarist. 

​His 11 other books include works of biography, history, literary criticism and memoir. They include Claxton: Field Notes from a Small Planet (2014) and Birds and People (2013). The latter was published to international acclaim and was a collaboration with the photographer David Tipling. Between them these two were shortlisted for six literary awards including the Thwaites/Wain-wright Prize. His book Crow Country was shortlisted for several awards, including the Samuel Johnson Prize, and won the New Angle Prize (2009). In 2016 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Literature from the University of East Anglia.​

He has travelled in more than 50 countries on six continents and in 1999 was awarded a Winston Churchill Travel Fellowship to study birds in magico-medicinal practices in Benin and Cameroon. For the last 35 years his home has been in Norfolk, where much of his spare time is devoted to the restoration of a small wooded fen called Blackwater. He is married to the arts professional Mary Muir, from whom he gets many of his best ideas!