Our last walk of the year, The London Ear, will take place on Remembrance Sunday. It’s a poignant time to think about peace, silence and noise. London experienced a noisy kind of peace on Armistice Day 1918. The social reformer Beatrice Webb wrote in her diary: ‘Peace! London today is a pandemonium of noise and revelry, […]
If you ever get the chance to visit a waste transfer station, go! I went this morning to my local facility at Southwark on a tour arranged for Open House. I left feeling that I had both satisfied my inner geek – I’ve been talking about MRFs on A Rubbish Trip for years, but never visited […]
We were thrilled to receive this poem from Wendell P Smith who came on A Genius Tour last week. The walk was led by Cathy Haynes specially for a group of visiting American science and arts undergraduate students. This walking tour of the creative process follows in the footsteps of those who’ve had great ideas […]
The Open House programme for 2019 has just been released and there are some cracking places to visit. If you don’t already know, Open House is the one weekend each year when hundreds of buildings in London open their doors to the public for free. It’s a chance to nose around beautifully architected homes, sneak […]
I was thrilled that our listening walk The London Ear was the theme of last week’s Soundscapes show on BBC Radio Ulster. If you don’t know the show it’s well worth checking out. It’s an eclectic mix of great music that you probably never heard before, along with a weekly featured soundscape. This week that was […]
Private group tours are a big part of what we do, be that for corporates, students, academics or friends. We spent a hugely enjoyable evening recently taking EU environmental lawyers on an environmental walk through central London. We covered topics from flooding and water pollution to air quality, climate change and biodiversity – all in the […]
To slow down a city that relies on speed to function can be a very effective way to draw attention to your cause. It’s something we discuss on London In Slow Motion. And we’ve seen some impressive examples recently. Take the People’s March last week and the student Climate Strike the week before – […]
What does London sound like? How much is thought through and how much is sonic waste? These are some of the ideas behind London A to G, the piece I produced as a follow-up to The London Ear. I was delighted that it was featured on BBC Radio Ulster’s Soundscapes programme in June. It has […]
When William III introduced the window tax it was met with popular outrage. Famously, there were those who bricked in their windows to avoid paying. What might otherwise have been welcomed as a progressive tax on large property owners, was instead perceived as a charge on light (hence the expression ‘daylight robbery’) and air.I found myself […]
Remembrance Sunday this year falls on 11 November, exactly 100 years after Armistice Day. To mark the occasion London’s Imperial War Museum has a programme of exhibits and events that look at the moment peace broke out. What comes through strongly is the sonic quality of that moment. On the battlefield, there was an instant silencing of artillery […]
