Exploring Migration Through Sound

Exploring Migration Through Sound: A Unique Live Performance

Join us for a unique live event exploring issues of migration through the mediums of sound and music. The Odyssey Ensemble and Cities and Memory, in collaboration with the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS), will present highlights from the global Migration Sounds project in a live context, along with discussion of how sound can be used to highlight and reframe some of the complex debates around migration - in particular forced migration.The event will introduce Migration Sounds and Odyssey, with artists presenting and performing pieces from the project.Artists confirmed so far include:

• The Odyssey Ensemble
• Cities and Memory
• Kid Kin
• Kim[bal]
• Arvik Torrensen

The event is free and open to all.

This is a seated event: entries will be permitted on 23 November 17:30 to valid ticket holders. Please book your ticket using the link on this page.

Please direct any questions to [email protected]

About Migration Sounds

Migration Sounds is the first ever global collection of the sounds of human migration, created as part of a year-long collaboration between Cities and Memory and the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS) at the University of Oxford.

Migration Sounds, features 120 sounds and stories of migration across 51 countries from Argentina to Australia, featuring personal stories from diaspora communities all over the world as well as migration camps and dramatic sea rescues. Taking the sounds of migration to an entirely different place, each recording has also been reshaped and reimagined as a creative composition by more than 100 musicians and sound artists from all over the world. Many of these artists are from migrant backgrounds themselves, and the compositions reflect new and highly personal perspectives on migration, settlement, home and exile, all conveyed through sound.

About Odyssey

Odyssey Ensemble is the UK's first professional musical collective dedicated to sharing refugee stories, advocating for the human dignity of asylum-seekers to be upheld.

With a musical ensemble at the core, Odyssey Ensemble's performances are often interdisciplinary, featuring refugee poets, dancers, filmmakers and other artists. While most of the ensemble's musicians are British nationals, refugees and asylum-seekers are featured as soloists and in other capacities front and centre in performances. With regular performances in Oxford and London, Odyssey's concert season will also include tours in areas with high orchestral concert attendance rates and where concern regarding inward refugee migration may be widespread. The ensemble hopes to invest in these communities by providing training to young musicians and giving them access to world-class artists while encouraging them to engage constructively and critically with refugee issues. In addition to members of the general public, Odyssey aims to perform for key policymakers and stakeholders to build connections and influence UK public policy on forced migration.

Odyssey Ensemble is a Registered Charity, no: 1208621

About Cities and Memory

Cities and Memory is one of the world’s biggest sound projects, which has more than 6,000 sounds covering more than 120 countries and territories, and more than 1,800 worldwide contributing artists, with the aim of remixing the world, one sound at a time.

Previous global Cities and Memory projects have included Polar Sounds, reimagining the sounds of the Arctic and Antarctic, #StayHomeSounds (a global mapping of the sounds of the Covid-19 lockdowns), Protest and Politics (the biggest ever collection of the sounds of protest) and Obsolete Sounds, the first global survey of disappearing, obsolete and endangered sounds. www.citiesandmemory.com

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

The Story Museum, 42 Pembroke Street, Oxford, United Kingdom