No sounds define the age we’re living in more clearly than protest sounds – and Protest and Politics is the world’s first global mapping of the sounds of protest and demonstration.

Explore the global sound map of protests

Explore different types of protest

Click on a marker listen to its sounds – click on the ‘information’ button while listening to a sound to read about how it was produced and the creative context and ideas behind it. Scroll through the different pages to hear different types of protest from Trump and Brexit to women’s rights and austerity.

Explore the project in full:

Background and context

Whether it’s people standing on either side of Donald Trump in the USA, Brexit in the UK, Marine Le Pen in France or any of thousands of local and national protests around the world, people are increasingly finding their voice and expressing themselves through sound.

These sounds, more than any other, are coming to define the age in which we’re living, and are uniting people, communities and entire countries around the world.

Protest and Politics is the first global mapping of the sounds of protest, demonstration and political activism.

Sourcing field recordings from our own archive as well as from dozens of field recordists around the world, we assembled a database of protest sounds over summer 2017, and opened this up to artists and musicians to recompose and reimagine, bringing to bear their own experiences and memories onto these sounds.

You can explore the documentary field recordings of protests, spend time in the alternative sound world created by their reimagined counterparts, or flip freely between the two as you choose.

Full playlist of sounds

Contributing artists

More than 100 sound designers, musicians and sound artists have contributed to the project, whether by reimagining a sound, providing a field recording from a protest, or both. Contributors come from all around the world – from Australia and the USA to Costa Rica and Brazil via Italy, France, Spain, the UK and many other countries.

There is more information about them on our contributors page, but here’s a full list.

Field recordings provided by:

Peter Annear

Stuart Bowditch

Cities and Memory

Ian Cook

Jack Corbett

Des Coulam

Ryan Cross

Ben Gale

Chinowski Garachana

Benjamin Glas-Hochstettler

Alan Gleeson

Sara E. Herrera

H.I.J.O.S. Bahía Blanca

Peter Hudston

Ian-John Hutchinson

Istanbul Is Ours

Sirpa Jokinen

Tim Kahn

Matthias Kispert

Petri Kuljuntausta

Nanny Roed Lauridsen

George Lessard

Philip Mantione

Michael McDermott

Tom Miller

Pedro Montesinos Blasco

Christian Motos

Michael Nardone

Kamen Nedev

Michael O’Connor

Pedro Oliveira

David Oppetit

Protyasha Pandey

Carlo Patrao

Georgia Pazarloglou

Vanessa Valencia Ramos

Ian Rawes

Aaron Rosenblum

Carlos Santos

Lezak Shallat

Matthew Simonson

Keira Simmons

Jacek Smolicki

Rebecca Toop and Maria Năstase

Paul Tourle

Robert van Riel

Mark Wilden

Chris Wood

Walker Wooding

Tsan-Cheng Wu

Reimagined sounds produced by:

Eduardo Abrantes

Peter Annear

John Aulich

Sewon Chung Barrera

Lisa Bartolomei

Andy Billington

Alan Bleay

Drew Bluetree

Eric Boivin

Stuart Bowditch

Sue Bowerman

Melike Ceylan

Aimee Chapman

Cities and Memory

Joe Connolly

Stace Constantinou

David Cowlard

Ryan Cross

Ljuba de Angelis

Luba Diduch

Toni Dimitrov

Jeff Dungfelder

Jonah Elrod

Ashley Elsdon

Fabrizio Festa

Chinowski Garachana

Robert Gillespie

Patrick Glen

Manuel Guerrero

Astrid Hald

Ian Haygreen

Alex Hehir

David Henckel

Jonathan Higgins

Jeff Hinton

Clara Hollomey

Gary JC