The Listening Planet

05/04/2026

Coming soon!

Coming soon! 📣

Sounds of Birmingham is a collaborative project led by Birmingham Music Archive, Birmingham City FC Foundation, National Trust and The Listening Planet, celebrating the city’s cultural and natural heritage through sound. Bringing together communities, musicians and Martyn Stewart’s extraordinary sound archive, the project will create new music that connects people to place and honours Martyn’s legacy in his home city.

🐦Volume One: The Birmingham Dawn Chorus🐦

Launching the project’s first chapter, The Dawn Chorus will explore the city's early-morning sounds - from parks and gardens to canals, streets and schools. Featuring archival and new recordings, community listening walks, school workshops, musician commissions and shared public moments, it will be an open invitation to listen, connect and co-create new music that celebrates Birmingham’s . 🌳🦆🎶



📸Rob Coleman

01/28/2026

Listen to our podcasts right here!

https://www.patreon.com/rss/Thelistener5566?auth=yNMd7ry131SeEt3A1qhDu7FZGulRB6U1

10/28/2025

A call from the wild. A life spent listening. A story we can’t tell alone.

This is The Listener.

For six decades, Martyn Stewart has been recording the living voice of the natural world. From booming alligators to dueting gibbons, and the haunting voices of now extinct species, Martyn has captured the sonic history of our planet.

This November, he’ll receive an OBE at Windsor Castle - not for speaking, but for a lifetime of listening. We are making an independent documentary about his work, sharing his deep love for the last wild places. We are filming the same way he lives: so the microphone leads, and the camera follows. There is no score telling you what to feel, the Earth is the music.

The Silent Crisis:
In one man’s working lifetime - Martyn’s recording career - 75% of wildlife has vanished from the planet…an unprecedented quietening. His sound archive is a vital baseline. It preserves the acoustic record of places that have, or may soon fall silent, inspiring us to fight for what remains.

Help The Team Across The Finish Line
This is an independent production driven by a small, award-winning family - including Emmy and BAFTA veterans. We have no studio safety net, just a fierce belief that this story must be told. This final chapter needs a community. By simply sharing this post, you help us to spread the message - the Earth is trying to tell us something - it’s time we all started listening.

ACT NOW:
🔁 Watch and share this post, to amplify the call.
💚 Support the final push Link in Bio!
🤝 Know a Patron? DM or Email Us.