What do you say when you are asked to describe where you live? Do you describe the buildings? Do you describe the people? Maybe you describe landscape.  What makes a certain place have its own distinctive character?  Do you describe its sounds?

Sometimes we forget sound, even try to shut it out, but without sound, places might not have the same "sense of place." Close your eyes for a moment and think about the sounds that are all around you at this moment. It might be the wind off the sea, the hum of your computer, birds, people passing by, rumble of car wheels.

How differently would your home feel if these sounds were no longer part of the soundscape? Would it seem like a different place if you?  When you change location do you take your home sounds with you in your memory?

Every place has sounds that you might not always notice, but those sounds help to create a sense of place.

Sounds that best represents a place. For example, the wind buffeting off the sea.

Sounds that show how people who live in that place interact with it.

Sounds that give clues about how a place is changing, for example the sounds of scaffolding going up.

All of these sounds build a "soundscape" and are part of the landscape.  Tune in and try making them with your voice. 

The Ayr Bourne project will work with people from South Ayrshire to do just this, focusing on all the layers of sound that resound and vibrate in South Ayrshire’s unique sonic fingerprint. Tuning in, making them with our voices and transforming them into a unique set of vocal phonic sound poems for broadcast & blog the Burns an’ a’ that Festival 2012