SoundEscapes 2026 — Discover art as you’ve never heard it before

Sound and Music · Friday at 10:16 AM

SoundEscapes returns in 2026, continuing a creative partnership between Sound and Music and the Sainsbury Centre art museum in Norwich. The project commissions original audio works of up to 60 seconds in duration, inviting creators to engage with artworks in the Centre’s collection through music and sound.

Following its first edition in 2024, SoundEscapes continues to explore how music can transform the experience of visual art, creating new opportunities for audiences to connect emotionally with artworks and discover their stories.

Spanning over 6,000 years of human creativity and encompassing a remarkable range of artistic mediums, the Sainsbury Centre’s collection provides the inspiration for composers to translate visual, spatial and emotional narratives into sound.

Dr Will Dutta, CEO at Sound and Music, said:

“We’re thrilled to partner with the Sainsbury Centre again for SoundEscapes. After a very successful first year, we’re excited to build on the inspiring meeting of visual art and new music and sound, championing exceptional UK creators and revealing the museum collection’s inner life in surprising, transformative ways.”

Rosy Gray, Head of Living Art at the Sainsbury Centre, said:

“This is such a brilliant opportunity to bring the highest-quality sound into the very heart of the Sainsbury Centre’s collection. We’re thrilled to be focusing on artworks both inside the museum and outside in the Sculpture Park.”

Jago Cooper, Director of the Sainsbury Centre, said:

“Listening to beautifully created soundtracks for artworks is a joy to behold, and creates such an accessible pathway to the meaning of art for our visitors.”

The new SoundEscapes works will launch on Thursday 3 December 2026. The compositions offer audiences the opportunity to experience music alongside the artworks that inspired it. The works will also form part of a new collection on Sound and Music’s Minute of Listening platform.

Discover art as you’ve never heard it before.

Meet the SoundEscapes 2026 creators

This year’s selected creators are Elif Nur Karlıdağ, Delia Stevens, NikNak, Lunatraktors and Fintan O’Hare, bringing together a breadth of musical practices, from percussion and electronic music to sound installation, turntablism and interdisciplinary performance. Five more creators will be announced soon.

Each creator has been invited to develop a new composition inspired by an artwork of their choice, capturing its essence and creating a memorable visitor experience in just 60 seconds. The commissions offer an opportunity for composers to explore their creative practice in a new context, while enabling artworks to tell their stories and engage with audiences through the power of music and sound.

Elif Nur Karlıdağ

Elif Nur Karlıdağ by Derrick Santini

Elif Nur Karlıdağ is a London-based Turkish/British composer working across concert music, music theatre and sound installation. Her work explores listening, memory and perception, creating immersive experiences through acoustic instruments, electronics, recorded sound and voice. Often rooted in historical research and lived experience, her music translates visual, spatial and emotional narratives into sound.

“I’m honoured to be selected for SoundEscapes and excited to continue exploring my interest in interdisciplinary practice, bringing music into conversation with one of the Sainsbury Centre’s remarkable artworks.”

Visit Elif Nur Karlıdağ’s profile | Chosen artwork: Standing Woman, Alberto Giacometti (1958-1959)

Delia Stevens

Delia Stevens by Ellie Lucas

Delia Stevens is a percussionist, improviser and curator whose work reimagines classical music through bold cross-genre collaboration. Her playing is described as “high-energy, rhythmically driven virtuosity” by the Guardian, and “superb” by the Financial Times. Her latest project saw Stevens & Pound premiere their reimagination of Holst’s Planet Suite at The Barbican with the Britten Sinfonia earlier this year.

“I’m thrilled to be selected as one of the creators for SoundEscapes, alongside BAFTA-winning sound designer Dan Jones, with whom I’ll be collaborating for the first time. I’m excited to explore how a percussionist’s approach, combined with electronics and fallen trees might deepen our experience of the natural world.”

Visit Delia Stevens’ profile | Chosen artwork: Beuys’ Acorns, Ackroyd & Harvey (2007)

NikNak

NikNak by Em Obeng

A pioneering figure in the UK turntablism scene, NikNak became the first Black turntablist to win the Oram Award in 2020 and added the Pop-Experimental Production Award at the Gigahertz Festival in 2025. Her work pushes the boundaries of what turntables can do, merging live improvisation with spatial electronic production.

Visit NikNak’s profile | Chosen artwork: Shango Staff in the Form of a Woman (1800 – 1950)

Lunatraktors

Lunatraktors by Hybrid Eyes

LUNATRAKTORS is a collaboration between choreographer and percussionist Carli Jefferson (she/her), and visually-impaired vocalist and researcher Clair Le Couteur (they/them). The duo’s trans-disciplinary practice investigates Anglo-Celtic folk heritage and decolonisation, working across sound, movement, costume, image-making, installation and film.

“This has been a wonderful experience. It’s clear the Sainsbury Centre and Sound and Music care deeply about art, and about people. This shared culture of respect makes working with both organisations so productive. The Living Art ethos aligned perfectly with our own processes and approach.”

Visit Lunatraktors’ profile | Chosen artwork: Mirage II, Dame Elisabeth Frink (1969)

Fintan O’Hare

Fintan O’Hare

Fintan O’Hare is a composer and sound artist working across acoustic, electronic and electromechanical music. His practice builds instruments and systems from found objects and salvaged materials, and his PhD at the University of York researched mechanical systems, found objects and musical interaction in relation to speech and text. He has developed interactives for Museum Speelklok, and educational music software.

“It’s a real pleasure to be working with the Sainsbury Centre on this project. Edwards’ Man of Stones makes its metamorphosis visible: the gathered branches, bullrushes, and flints can be seen within the finished bronze, connecting the figure to the landscape it inhabits.

My own practice shares a preoccupation with found materials and transformation, combining physical objects with audio synthesis to explore how non-human sound can acquire the qualities of a human voice. This project offers an opportunity to bring these two practices into dialogue, and explore how algorithmic composition, applied to materials gathered from the same landscape, can deepen an audience’s connection to place.”

Visit Fintan O’Hare’s profile | Chosen artwork: Man of Stones, Laurence Edwards (2019)

About SoundEscapes

SoundEscapes was first launched in December 2024 as a creative collaboration between Sound and Music and the Sainsbury Centre, bringing together creators from Sound and Music’s alumni community to create original compositions inspired by the museum’s collection. The project reflects a shared commitment to originality, artistic exploration and finding new ways for people to experience and connect with art.

For the 2026 edition, eligible creators from Sound and Music’s alumni community were again invited to apply for commissions of £1,000, with an additional production grant of up to £750 to support recording, research and production costs.

The selection process was undertaken by members of the Sound and Music and Sainsbury Centre teams in line with Sound and Music’s Fair Access Principles, taking account of originality, motivation, artistic approach and the potential to create a memorable audience experience.

SoundEscapes, has been a highlight of the Sainsbury Centre’s collection since launch leading to a 100% increase in visitor engagement and transforming the visitor experience. The works generated 1,500 listens on the Smartify app and were viewed more than 80,000 times via the project’s showcase video.

Lunatraktors Sainsbury Centre Site Visit by Kate Wolstenholme

“We were thrilled by the opportunity to engage with these incredible Elisabeth Frink pieces in such a nourishing setting. To move in relation to them for a long time — both in our bodies, and in the bodies of the Hazard Bears — was endlessly fascinating. We spent five hours with them; it passed in a flash.

The sheer diversity and complexity of tones and sounds — how vocal they are, how responsive to different kinds of touch. So tactile, with so much evidence in the bronze of hands-on making. So slender, surprisingly mobile, flexing and providing their own rhythms. We could have stayed all night.”

— Clair Le Couteur (Lunatraktors)

Learn more about SoundEscapes:

About the Sainsbury Centre

The Sainsbury Centre is a world-class art museum with a unique perspective on how art can foster cultural dialogue and exchange. Following a radical relaunch in 2023 the Sainsbury Centre is the first museum in the world to formally recognise the living lifeforce of art, enabling people to build relationships across an arts landscape. The art of the Sainsbury Centre is able to help reframe and answer the most important questions people have in their lives. It is not a museum to only learn more about artists, cultures or movements like Francis Bacon, the Tang Dynasty or Modernism, it is a place of experience, where collections are animate, and visitors are emotionally connected.

One of the first museums in the world to display art from all around the globe and from all time periods equally and collectively, Sir Robert and Lady Lisa Sainsbury created one of the most sought after yet non-conformist art collections. In 1973 they donated their collection, which transcended traditional barriers between art, architecture, archaeology, and anthropology to the University of East Anglia (UEA), and created an entirely new type of museum. Housed in Sir Norman Foster’s revolutionary first ever public building, the space aimed for an interactive relationship between people, object, and landscape where art was placed within an open yet intimate ‘living area’.

Visit sainsburycentre.ac.uk or call 01603 593 199

Follow @sainsburycentre on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram