Urban Dwellers
Exploring entwined histories and urban entanglements through the sounds of Londons local wildlife. Urban Dwellers is a monthly radio show on Resonance FM, played on the 4th Friday of each month at 2pm and repeats the following Tuesday at 2pm.
Available to listen on 104.4fm or online at Resonance FM
Also available to listen back to any of the previous episodes on Resonance Mixcloud
The autumn season explores three urban cemeteries from the early 19th century that have long since provided an undisturbed home for their more-than-human residents as the city rapidly changes around them.
This month:
The Lost Forest of Middlesex – a sound walk through the different lifetimes of the ancient forest that once covered the North of London. Trace the old pathways through the woods before they become the roads we know today and reimagine North London as a vast woodland filled with wolves, bears and wild boar. Listen to the changes in the forest soundscape as Romans use the site for pottery making and medieval Bishops use it as hunting grounds until eventually most of the area gets developed into housing. Then wander through the remaining sections of ancient woodland finding traces and ghosts of the once vast forest, crouch down and listen to the dead hedges that are teeming with life and insects that predate even the trees and finally sit beneath the old oaks and consider a future where the wheezes and mumbles of beavers can be heard amongst the forest sounds again.
Previous episodes:
September 2023
Episode 1: Hoxton follows the sounds within the compost at Hoxton Gardens, the ravens and crows at Shoreditch Park and conversations with Holmes the pig. With thanks to Stephen Mason, the community gardener at Hoxton and the volunteers at Spitalfields Farm.
October 2023
Episode 2: The Barbican and Cripplegate follows the hauntings of Cripplegate and its disappearance, the story behind one of the oldest trees in London and the sounds of Barbican’s cooing pigeons, water fountains and wildlife meadows.
November 2023
Episode 3: Barbican Wildlife Garden explores the sounds of a small wildlife garden on a stormy Wednesday morning, with sounds from under the pond as droplets of rain hit the surface, frogs sheltering under a tree and pigeons and sparrows looking for worms as the storm brings them out of hiding. With thanks to the Barbican Wildlife Garden, Lizzie Prescott Price and all the wonderful volunteer gardeners.
January 2024
Episode 4: The Thames takes you mudlarking under the millennium bridge finding bones, oyster shells, moss and lichen and investigating the historical role of the river in Londons urban identity. With thanks to Jo Sunderland from the Thames Explorer Trust.
February 2024
Episode 5: Eigg is a composition of sounds from the Bothy Residency on the Isle of Eigg and explores the caves, singing sands, rivers, forests and the whistling and rustlings of the island and the bothy. With thanks to the Bothy Project, Lucy Conway and the Eigg Singing Group and with support from Creative Scotland.
March 2024
Episode 6: Epping Forest explores the sounds within London’s largest forest. Following the stories of old friendships and ways of co-existence through the great oaks still scarred by lopping from hundreds of years ago, the great spotted woodpecker and its complex relationship with the trees and down beneath the bogs where you hear the creaking and knocking of branches against the city’s rubbish trapped in the bogland. With ‘The Shepards Tree’ a short poem by John Clare who once wrote his poems in a private asylum in the heart of the forest.
April 2024
Episode 7: Walthamstow Wetlands explores the sounds within Europes largest urban wetland. Listen to the complex ecosystem beneath the water, the sounds of swimming water boatmen and swollen-thighed beetles crawling across daisies and sit by the reservoirs as the waterfowl fish for their breakfast.
May 2024
Episode 8: Chelsea Physic Garden is a sound walk around Londons oldest botanical garden. With thanks to the gardeners and volunteers at Chelsea Physic Garden.
June 2024
Episode 9: Hampstead Heath takes a walk with anthropologist and Hampstead Heath volunteer Laura Spagliardi discussing biodiversity and re-wilding. Rummage through the hedgerows and listen to what a grass snake might hear when hiding in the heather.
October 2024
Episode 10: Brick Lane traces the overlapping territories of the most misunderstood creatures in the city. Listen to the sounds of the screaming foxes and scurrying squirrels as they tell stories of complex inter-species relationships against the backdrop of the famous bustling street in East London.
November 2024
Episode 11: Boundary Gardens explores the transitory sounds of autumn as you walk around and up the mound to Arnold Circus. Listen to the sparrows gather and the snails and slugs as they hide amongst the fallen leaves.
December 2024
Episode 12: Regents Canal takes you on a sound walk along the Towpath from Haggerston towards Bethnal Green. Listen to the canal boats from under the water and the piercing cries of gulls and coots as you follow them down a route over 200 years old.
February 2025
Episode 13: Calthorpe Gardens explores the sounds of a well loved community garden that almost became a block of office buildings. Crouch down to spot wild mushrooms, sit underneath a Cotoneaster tree as the thrushes nibble at its berries and trace the lost river fleet, its healing wells and those who might have tended to them.
March 2025
Episode 14: William Curtis Ecological Park takes a sound walk through the ghosts of one of Britain’s first ecological parks, one that only existed for 8 years yet made a lasting impact on Londons urban identity. Follow the river and learn about butterflies that would’ve pollinated the meadows and the changing colours of city moths as William Curtis instructs us how to catch them and hunt for frogs and minibeasts that were rescued by local school kids when the park was at its end.
April 2025
Episode 15: Stave Hill Ecological Park continues the journey from its predecessor the William Curtis Ecological Park. Sit on top of Stave Hill and listen to the songbirds melody rise above the cities drone, explore the remains of the docklands where sparrows dance in the dust and a grey heron snacks on frog spawn and savour the squeaking birch trees and other intimate sounds that might soon be lost to urban noise.
May 2025
Episode 16: Battersea explores the once derelict Battersea Power Station, the water that once cycled through it and the electricity it once generated. Listen as bees use electric fields to pollinate wisteria and peregrine falcons nest in the power stations chimney. Take a walk through Battersea Park as water runs from the thames to the old mill pond, through the steam turbines and finally to the fountains in pleasure gardens.
June 2025
Episode 17: Finsbury Circus explores the history of the City of Londons oldest and biggest park, recently re-opened after 10 years. Explore the great fen that stretched out over the city of London hundreds of years ago and the River Walbrook that passed through it, referenced in the new rain beds in the gardens. Hear about the Moor Fields, Londons first public open space and the burial grounds, roman roads and sections of the city wall that lie beneath its surface.
July 2025
Episode 18: Stratford takes a walk through Stratford, exploring the areas diverse urban green spaces with a group of walkers from Centre of Sustainable Fashion. Listen to the rustling common reed and the passing pulse of the railway and the river lea. Sit with the splashing ducks and coots in the wetland walk amidst the distant buzz of shopping centres, inspect the various bat boxes and sensors installed on local poplar trees and follow meandering footsteps and wondering contemplations of place identity, more-than-human territories and imagined sounds. Featuring extracts from a composition commissioned by Centre for Sustainable Fashion (CSF) on the occasion of IFFTI 2025, London College of Fashion. Thanks to CSF walker facilitators: Anna Fitzpatrick, Camilla Palestra, Charley Copperthwaite, Dilys Williams, Hannah Riley, Jade McSorley, Natasha Mays.
The autumn season explores three urban cemeteries from the early 19th century that have long since provided an undisturbed home for their more-than-human residents as the city rapidly changes around them.
October 2025
Episode 19: Abney Park Cemetery was a brickearth heath, a home for Lady Mary Abney and Isaac Watts, an arboretum on a non-denominational burial grounds, an abandoned cemetery and now a local nature reserve. Discover traces of the sites rich history as we meander through the cemetery on a crisp autumn morning. On our walk we’ll investigate the changes in tree communities throughout the years, discuss the ecological importance of rotting and decaying wood, hear the folklore behind local wildflowers and meet community volunteers on the way as they map long lost headstones. With thanks to volunteers of Abney Unearthed.
November 2025
Episode 20: Glasgow Necropolis begins on a walk up Necropolis Hill, asking how we might listen to stone. Learn about the history of the land and the dolerite beneath our feet as we climb the stone steps. Then, take a closer look at the lichen that map the victorian monuments and tell us about the microclimates of a gravestone. We end at dusk, listening to the bats ultrasonic call as they hunt in the grounds and roost in the autumn ivy.
December 2025
Greyfriars Kirk is a sound walk through the 400 year old cemetery in Edinburgh. Once an apothecary garden tended to by friars, the kirkyard has since seen fires, hauntings, bodysnatching and been made famous by wizards and a little terrier. Read the slate notes in the soil as medicinal herbs are once again grown in the garden, peer under the iron gates that protect the dead to find the ladybirds that hibernate beneath them and contemplate theories of deep time and living stone as we search for Craigleith sandstone round James Huttons grave.
February 2026
Episode 22. Dis-locations – Walthamstow Marshes. Beth revisits 4 different sections of Walthamstow Marshes, their histories and the urban dwellers that make up their sonic identities. She explores the site as a dis-location, experimenting with the differences and similarities between each of the chosen sites to create her own network of territories, tracing point A as it becomes point B to reveal how restless and dynamic the boundaries really are. Dis-locations was a live performance as part of the Coexistence: Soil and Sound event on 15 December.
March 2026
Episode 23: The Devils Plantation and Camphill Fort transitions between two points from Harry Bells Prehistoric Site Alignments in Glasgow. Beginning at the Devils Plantation, an ancient burial ground tucked into the side of the busy A276, hear the sounds of the howling wind from within an old beech tree guarding the ancient site. As the sound moves from the Devils Plantation to the Camphill iron age fort atop Queens Park, listen to the story of archeo-orienteer Harry Bell, his investigation into Glasgows secret geometry and the many artists and theorists who have traced his steps exploring their own relationship with the cities landscape and the forgotten maps that once shaped it.
April 2026
Ruislip Lido and Two Jars of Sand is a contemplation of sand as an ancient ecological force, an environmental process, an agent, a gathering and a defining material of the anthropocene. Sat on the beach at Ruislip Lido with a hydrophone in the lake, slowly being buried beneath the yellow sand imported in the 1930s, I hold two jars of singing sand from the Isle of Eigg and consider the ethical and ecological implications of spilling them onto the beach. Listen to the sounds from beneath the lake and conjure a creature made of sand to respond to this ethical dilemma, one that has journeyed from cliff faces and glaciers to riverbeds and playground floors and will eventually become the silica chips in my field recorder or the very glass jars that, for only a moment, contain it.
May 2026
Corridor Dwellers investigates the sound within green and blue wildlife corridors in London. Listen to the hidden sounds of creatures that dwell within the hedgerows, the railway embankments, the riversides and chalk streams and contemplate the importance of these complex passageways that connect urban wildlife and help us reimagine the city as a network of interspecies communities.
June 2026
This episode visits Seaford to escape from the heatwave to the cool sea air. On top of the white chalk cliffs the nesting gulls call to one another as land crumbles into sea. At a site of strength and vulnerability in the midst of our warming springs, the changing climate and our entangled relationships with one another plays on the mind. Think of the missing stag beetles in London and the strange affairs between ants and blue butterflies on the chalk grasslands as the ocean waves rattle the pebbles and pull the sand from beneath our feet.
