Ain Bailey: Sonic Stories
Saturday, July 18, 2026 · 2:00 PM – 5:30 PM
Artists
Ain Bailey’s Sonic Stories workshop takes as its starting point Maybe It’s Because I’m A Londoner, Bailey with Elaine Mitchener’s Art On The Underground commission. The project's genesis reflects on Bailey’s recounting of the loss of more than 70 important cultural, social and community spaces across London over the last 50 years.
Across cities, and London in particular, music venues, community centres, clubs, informal meeting places and artist-led spaces have faced increasing pressures from redevelopment, rising costs and changing patterns of urban life. These losses are not simply physical; they also affect networks of care, shared histories, cultural memory and collective identity.
Through listening, sound, conversation, and collective reflection, we will explore and reflect on the erasure of places of gathering, creativity and belonging, and what is at stake when they disappear.
This iteration of Sonic Stories is presented as part of The Trembling City: Sound, Cities, and Spatial Justice, a series of workshops and public programmes conceived by sonic theorist Gascia Ouzounian and developed with Ibraaz as part of the Sonorous Cities project.
We invite participants to share 2/3 sounds and sonic moments from their lives that have particular resonances, and that speak to these important and much missed spaces.
Expressions of Interest
To participate in the workshops, please submit the following to soncitiesproject@gmail.com
- Name and contact details
- A short statement (around 50-100 words) describing your interest and motivations for attending. If relevant, please also include details of your research or creative practice background.
Please send your expression of interest by July 9.
Photo: Katarzyna Perlak
Ain Bailey is a composer, artist and DJ. She facilitates workshops considering the role of sound in the formation of identity, and the exploration of memory and sound. In 2020 Bailey and Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski created a composition and print entitled Remember To Exhale for Studio Voltaire, London. Previous exhibitions include And We’ll Always Be A Disco In The Glow Of Love, Cubitt Gallery, London (2019); Version, Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge (2021); Atlantic Railton which was part of the Listening To The City sound installation programme in the 2021 Serpentine Pavilion; Untitled: Our Wedding for the Black Melancholia exhibition at CCS Bard (2022), New York, USA and Trioesque for Bruckenmusik 27 in Cologne, Germany (2022), the installation Four (2024) for FACT Liverpool’s Resolution research project. The most recent commission was The Jamaica Project (2026 )for Camden Art Centre, London. She was the 2022-23 Cavendish Arts Science Fellow at Girton College, University of Cambridge. In June 2026, she opened her sound commission with Elaine Mitchener for Art On The Underground at Waterloo Station.
Across cities, and London in particular, music venues, community centres, clubs, informal meeting places and artist-led spaces have faced increasing pressures from redevelopment, rising costs and changing patterns of urban life. These losses are not simply physical; they also affect networks of care, shared histories, cultural memory and collective identity.
Through listening, sound, conversation, and collective reflection, we will explore and reflect on the erasure of places of gathering, creativity and belonging, and what is at stake when they disappear.
This iteration of Sonic Stories is presented as part of The Trembling City: Sound, Cities, and Spatial Justice, a series of workshops and public programmes conceived by sonic theorist Gascia Ouzounian and developed with Ibraaz as part of the Sonorous Cities project.
We invite participants to share 2/3 sounds and sonic moments from their lives that have particular resonances, and that speak to these important and much missed spaces.
Expressions of Interest
To participate in the workshops, please submit the following to soncitiesproject@gmail.com
- Name and contact details
- A short statement (around 50-100 words) describing your interest and motivations for attending. If relevant, please also include details of your research or creative practice background.
Please send your expression of interest by July 9.
Photo: Katarzyna Perlak
Ain Bailey is a composer, artist and DJ. She facilitates workshops considering the role of sound in the formation of identity, and the exploration of memory and sound. In 2020 Bailey and Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski created a composition and print entitled Remember To Exhale for Studio Voltaire, London. Previous exhibitions include And We’ll Always Be A Disco In The Glow Of Love, Cubitt Gallery, London (2019); Version, Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge (2021); Atlantic Railton which was part of the Listening To The City sound installation programme in the 2021 Serpentine Pavilion; Untitled: Our Wedding for the Black Melancholia exhibition at CCS Bard (2022), New York, USA and Trioesque for Bruckenmusik 27 in Cologne, Germany (2022), the installation Four (2024) for FACT Liverpool’s Resolution research project. The most recent commission was The Jamaica Project (2026 )for Camden Art Centre, London. She was the 2022-23 Cavendish Arts Science Fellow at Girton College, University of Cambridge. In June 2026, she opened her sound commission with Elaine Mitchener for Art On The Underground at Waterloo Station.