On February 18, 2021, Ellen Reid's SOUNDWALK, a free, immersive audio experience, which premiered in New York’s Central Park, will launch at Los Angeles' Griffith Park. SOUNDWALK is a piece of public art that uses music to illuminate the natural environment, encouraging calm reflection and introspection. Presented by CAP UCLA, it will feature new music performed by Kronos Quartet and the SOUNDWALK Ensemble.
Created by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and sound artist Ellen Reid, this project is part of Mindscapes, Wellcome's latest international cultural programme about mental health. Mindscapes aims to support a transformation in how we understand, address and talk about mental health by inspiring relevant and meaningful conversations that seek out a diversity of experience and place. This international cultural initiative is inspired and informed by Wellcome's support for new research on mental health. Major collaborations are staged in Bengaluru, Berlin, New York and Tokyo with satellite partnerships in other locations. As part of the New York City component of Mindscapes, Rebecca Hayes Jacobs, the Wellcome Trust Mental Health Curatorial Research Fellow at The Graduate Center, CUNY’s Center for the Humanities, served as Curatorial Advisor for the Central Park SOUNDWALK.
A new short film about SOUNDWALK produced for Wellcome’s Mindscapes, featuring Ellen Reid and New York City Parks Commissioner Mitchell Silver addresses how music and parks contribute to mental health and well being:
Reid and Silver also participated in a panel discussion at the Hamwe Festival, hosted by the University of Global Health Equity (UGHE) in Kigali, Rwanda, called "Resonant Spaces: Finding Well-Being through Parks and Music." They were joined by one of Reid’s collaborators, Adedayo Perkovich, and Rebecca Jacobs moderated. The group discussed mental health in New York’s parks, a subject currently being studied through a collaboration between the NYC Parks Department and researchers at The Graduate Center. It is available for viewing here as the last panel from day 2 of the festival:
(For the video above, please note that the discussion begins at 4h:58m:17s mark.)
