SPARC Symposium 2026: Sound(ing) Bodies

This year’s SPARC symposium is centred on creative health and wellbeing. Through immersive concerts, talks, workshops and a fieldtrip we invite practitioners from diverse artistic and academic backgrounds to come together to discuss, explore and debate.

The symposium brings together presentations by world-leading artists and researchers both from outside and within the City St George’s community, and from both the Department of Performing Arts and other departments and schools at the university. It features the first Creative Arts and Health Forum, jointly curated by the School of Communication and Creativity (SCC) and the School of Health and Medical Sciences (SHMS). The focus is interdisciplinary research initiatives in Creative Health, within the University and outside, across community and clinical contexts, including contribution to impact and public engagement. The forum also marks the launch of a landmark short course in Creative Health, the product of a partnership between City St George’s and London Arts & Health.

The symposium showcases SPARC Lab, our outstanding technological facilities for immersive sound and movement, based at City St George’s Department of Performing Arts, including an Ambisonic 24.4-channel loudspeaker dome surrounding the audience and the IKO: a unique, 20-sided, 3-D loudspeaker array.

We are grateful for support from the City St George’s Enhancing Research Culture (ERC) and Impact Support Fund as well as funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) for SPARC Lab.

Please note, each event requires a separate registration. Please visit the links below to see event details and booking forms.

Symposium Overview:

Wednesday 27th May

10:30-18:00

SCC Postgraduate Conference

The School of Communication & Creativity (SCC) at City St George’s brings together the Departments of Journalism; Media, Culture and Creative Industries (including the Journalism & Democracy Centre); and Performing Arts (including SPARC, our centre for Sound Practice and Research at City St George’s). This interdisciplinary postgraduate conference showcases the diverse and creative work of postgraduate researchers based in SCC.

Venue: AG09 and AG10, College Building

19:00

Concert: From the SPARC Studios

Music research students Laura Selby, Pantea Armanfar, Günseli Naz Ferel, Bea Hebron, Kristian Skaarbrevik, William Stokes, and Maisha Patodia present their work with the SPARC Lab immersive loudspeaker system.

Venue: Performance Space

Thursday 28th May

17:00-18:30

Workshop with Rosie Middleton: Music Creation, Risk, ‘Safety’, and Consent

When does artistic risk become dangerous? What impacts the levels of risk we take in our creative work? How can we create safer working environments in collaboration? Focusing on two experimental music-theatre projects, mezzo-soprano and doctoral candidate Rosie Middleton will share insights from her practice research into risk in collaborative music creation. She will explore cultural and social factors and behavioural traits that develop in classical music training that significantly impact our approach to risk and performance, and share strategies to work with risky material, while also prioritising the wellbeing of the artists involved. The workshop will culminate in an optional(!) collective musical experiment.

Venue: Performance Space

19:00

Concert: Helen Anahita-Wilson

This evening sees composer, sound artist, pianist and welcome trust researcher Helen Anahita-Wilson present Music from the Quietest Place on Earth. This performance, presented as a work in progress, draws on interior, corporeal listening experiences to tonotopically explore soundworlds of the human body. Created in response to spending time in the Orfield Laboratories anechoic chamber in Minneapolis, sounds from eyelids, lungs, and pumping arteries are musically transducted in an indeterminate and interoceptive new work.

Venue: Performance Space

Friday 29th May

13:00 – 18:30

Creative Arts and Health Forum

This is a research sharing and networking event, jointly curated by the School of Communication and Creativity (SCC) and the School of Health and Medical Sciences (SHMS). The focus is interdisciplinary research initiatives in Creative Health, within the University and outside, across community and clinical contexts, including contribution to impact and public engagement.

The event includes a Keynote address from Professor Rosie Perkins (RCM), papers exploring creative health as interdisciplinary practice (including a presentation from Anna Woolf, CEO of London Arts & Health) and a panel discussion titled ‘Evidencing Change: How do we evidence ways in which the arts may support health and wellbeing?' Following a short drinks reception Jackie Walduck, Chloe Cooper & Ruth Herbert will present a 90-minute interactive multisensory workshop inviting participants/audience to explore an audiovisual practice first developed in mental health and wellbeing contexts.

The Creative Arts and Health Forum forms part of SPARC’s 2026 Sound[ing] Bodies Symposium (Tuesday 26th to Sunday 31st May). It will be followed by the opportunity to attend an immersive concert.

Venue: A130 (Forum), Performance Space (Workshop)

19:00

Concert: Aki Pasoulas and Newton Armstrong

This evening sees electroacoustic composer and academic Aki Pasoulas and composer, performer, and occasional builder of electronic musical instruments Newton Armstrong present ambisonic works.

Venue: Performance Space

Saturday 30th May

13:00 – 17:00

Sound[ing] Bodies symposium talks

Aritsts and researchers consider the themes of creative health, wellbeing and sonic practices. Speakers include Helen Anahita-Wilson, Iain Chambers, Rosie Middleton, Aki Pasoulas.

There will also be a special reading from Tim Rutherford-Johnson of passages from the book Schubert Dub (provisional title) he is currently writing that he describes as “a unique, intimate memoir through new music, chronic illness and my own troubled relationship with Franz Schubert.”

Throughout the day there will also be an installation called Voice Hearing. Through workshops with participants experiencing voice hearing, Iain Chambers co-produced audio works reflecting the lived experience of voice hearing, and how specific sounds and environments affected the way the voices manifested.

Venue: AG09

19:00

Concert: Rosie Middleton and p.e.r.s.o.n.a.l.c.l.u.t.t.e.r.: Palimpsests, Bodies and Imprints

Rosie Middleton presents two new palimpsests created at City with and for p.e.r.s.o.n.a.l.c.l.u.t.t.e.r. alongside other for voice, body and flute including a virtuosic new work for voice and bass flute by Diana Soh.

Palimpsest is an iterative multi-year experiment for voice, recordings, and other improvisers, exploring the transformation of memory over time. It examines how our memories are distorted by new experiences, others' narratives, and changing environments, layering performers, audiences and spaces.

Venue: Performance Space

Sunday 31st May

12:00 – 14:00

SPARC Field Trip: You look at a score, you do it

Every SPARC symposium finishes with a field-trip and this year we will be heading to Walthamstow Wetlands for a guided walk by Irene Revell around walking scores by Annea Lockwood and others.

Venue: meet outside the Engine House Café, Walthamstow Wetlands. Please see the event page for details of location and how to get there.