World Listening Day 2021

The World Listening Project's signature initiative, World Listening Day, was established in 2010 as an international day of awareness for the burgeoning and diversifying interests in our changing acoustic environment through local and online activities. The date, July 18, honors the renowned Canadian composer, music educator, and author, R. Murray Schafer on his birthday. Each year a respected practitioner creates a theme to inspire projects for World Listening Day.

In 2020 we were forced to pause by an invisible virus. This brought countless consequences to the environment, and to the sonic environment in particular. New acoustic horizons emerged, signaling times of unquietness and global change, and requiring our listening awareness to evolve.

​The theme for 2021 “The Unquiet Earth” is an invitation to reflect on and engage with the constant murmur of the Earth, sounds beyond the threshold of human hearing, to remind ourselves that we share this mysterious and awesome planet. Small, hidden, subterranean, aerial, underwater, infra and ultrasonic sounds, inaudible to the naked ear, can bring a new, potentially hopeful, perspective on the future of the planet and humanity. Listening as activism encourages us to question our attitudes as listeners as we aim to construct a more inclusive and empathetic new world. Join the unquiet revolution!

For more information, visit the World Listening Day 2021 page on the WLP website.