Sounding City Summer School 2026 will explore the sound of water in our local community, within ourselves, and beneath the waves.

Water is an evasive substance, color, taste, and odor less. Yet, water is the element that, more than any other, ties living beings in to the world around them – from the oceans that surround us to the water that makes up most of our bodies. Humans are 60% water; 71% of the planet’s surface is covered by the ocean. Yet only 2,5% is fresh water, only a fraction of which is drinking water. Water is pervasive, we are all water enabled bodily infrastructures, and water embeds us in our environments – our urban infrastructures and our dry or watery landscapes. Water is within and without, as humans we are in a watery osmosis and always shifting with the hydrologic cycle. Life circulates with water, yet waters can be catastrophic, destroying or re-shaping life and cultures. 

Additionally, water carries sound exceptionally well, making sounds louder and travel faster and farther than through air.

During Sounding City 2026, The Waters Within and Without, we will explore how to listen to the waters and we will experiment creatively with how we make others listen, to raise awareness around the water cycles and how we live by them.

Sounding City Summer School takes place from the 27th of July to the 14th of August 2026.

The summer school spans over three weeks. The first week is online while the last two weeks are on location in Struer, the City of Sound, in Western Jutland.

You can find further information on the course  logistics here.

Students will be introduced to theories of soundscapes and placemaking and how to listen to and engage with human, multispecies and nature environments. Students will be able to examine and analyze sound productions and public spaces, and also to fieldwork and field recording methodologies, working additionally with on-site interview techniques as well as with design thinking, creative and maker processes.

Sounding City Summer School consists of an online introductory section (a series of sessions, discussion and workshops based on reading recommendations to be studied before the Summer school starts) and two weeks in August on-site in Struer, during which participants will meet and work with sound art labsters, museum curators, municipal stakeholders, audiences and residents on urban challenges for which they will conceptualise, test, prototype and present a sonic solution and/or intervention to raise awareness.

The stay in Struer will end with the opening of an exhibition as well as with a presentation session with local stakeholders.

See examples of previous projects and previous exhibitions.