'Carrying Each Other's Hearts With Our Ears'

‘Carrying Each Other’s Hearts with our Ears’: A Community Music & Research Project for Muslims in London & Greater Manchester

Welcome to my new research project, funded by a Hallsworth Research Fellowship in Geography at the University of Manchester (2025-2028).

This three-year project explores Muslim experiences of music, sound, and health, and asks how this knowledge can shape more equitable access to creative health. The project has grown from community interest in having creative spaces for Muslims and people of Muslim heritage to make music and sound together, and explores how culture, heritage and spirituality affects not only our relationships to music, sound and health but also our definitions and understandings of these words and their meanings.

The project title comes from a community member who I worked with earlier this year, who said that group improvisation felt like ‘carrying each other’s hearts with our ears’ (the illustration opposite comes from the zine that we co-created at the end of the pilot).

What I’m currently working on…

1. Community consultations: Focus groups in London, Greater Manchester, and online.

2. Participatory sound mapping Workshops for us to create sound maps - finding ways to explore and express some of our geographies of sound and health and re-imagining together what a map could be and do.

3. Music and sound-making groups: Regular sessions co-created with participants in community spaces, combining conversation, improvised music-making, and reflection. These will also include developing a community music training toolkit offering support to community facilitators to be able to run and set up their own music groups beyond this project’s lifetime.

4. A Podcast to share experiences, conversations and perspectives on creative health, music-making, health inequalities, and project updates.

If you are interested in getting involved as a participant, collaborating as a community organisation or simply to learn more, please fill in the form below to send me a message or be added to the mailing list!