The Sonic Garden
The Sonic Garden is a specialist creative project in community settings, schools and colleges. We work with people to build and explore the creative possibilities of home made accessible DIY instruments and installations.
‘As a result of their complex disabilities and other reasons, our higher needs pupils often are at risk from marginalised lives with limited access to the range of opportunities and experiences their mainstream peers. Therefore we embrace working with providers such as Lifesize, skilled practitioners that can provide enrichment breadth to their learning whilst also promoting their mental health and well-being’.
Head teacher, SEN school
Pupils from a SEN college create music with instruments they built during an enrichment course facilitated by Lifesize
‘I love the sound boards, colourful with all the sounds from bottles and things from the bag’, ‘I think our orchestra can be a show too, I want our school to come and see us play music’.
Pupil feedback
The Sonic Fair
We work with other organisations and individuals to create public events called Sonic Fairs. Featuring interactive sound installations and homemade instruments visitors are welcome to immerse themselves in the event, exploring the many activities and sounds in the space, taking part in workshops and watching performances.
Community outreach project
Lifesize facilitators work with community groups experiencing barriers to inclusion to design and build home made instruments for use in a performance
Event Pre-production
Lifesize facilitators and Associate artists design and build installations and instruments
Public interactive exhibition
The public visit the exhibition and explore the interactive installations and instruments
Perfomances
Community outreach groups and a variety of performers take to the stage playing music with re purposed items and home made instruments
Pop up workshops
A range of free community workshops across the exhibition space exploring DIY instrument building, Technology, Sound exploration, accessible music strategies
What did people think of the Sonic fair?
‘I love making my sound box, it makes lots of sounds and i can play with my friends at the Sonic Fair, i will show my family’
Learning disabled adult taking part in community outreach project
‘I really enjoyed it; I liked the screaming competition because I could shout as loud as possible! I also liked the trampoline; I liked jumping up and down and it made funny noises.’
Exhibition visitor age 10
Our pupils had the pleasure of attending the Lifesize interactive Sonic Fair music exhibit. The event was a journey of sound exploration, learning and fun. it was such an engaging experience and one that has been talked about by our pupils ever since!’
SEN school teacher
It was a great experience for the family like us, we love making noises and we had a family jam on stage! Our kids loved it, and we adults did too. I thought everything was so cleverly built, I haven't seen anything like that before. I really enjoyed the interactive part. We were part of the exhibition, it doesn't happen often!’
Exhibition visitor
‘Lifesize and are so creative and I am inspired by their work. People can enjoy watching, interacting and immersing themselves into the event. 音means “sound”, 楽means “fun” and 音楽means “music” in Japanese so the Sonic Fair was really just that’
Ichi (performer and commissioned artist)
in 2022 we were supported by The British Council to collaborate with other organisations and host Sonic Fairs in Hastings, UK and Paris, France
Sonic Fair Hastings
Sonic Fair Paris
Sonic Sound makers
Community groups engage in group instrument building, Exploring the principles of sound, learning how to use hand tools, electronics and working as a group to design and build musical instruments.
