The Listening Passport

We are in very uncertain times, which people's wellbeing and mental health is vulnerable. 

Like many people I am in lockdown with my family and due to the circumstances, I have begun to reassess my place in family and society. 

At times like this we need activity to stimulate ourselves, to keep focused on the positive and to engaged in our senses with each other. 

In the light of this isolation being implemented on us I have designed a listening passport. This can be done alone, or as a family intergenerational activity.

This is a creative wellbeing tool allowing for the user to re-engage and reassess through focused listening tasks with their own sonic environment by challenging a new point of listening and identify sounds that they can value as hopeful and positive sounds.

We all have unique sounds in our own homes, ones which may have surrounded us for years. But how many have we really took time to pause and value? How many contribute to our own happiness? What about sounds we have never noticed before prior to the lockdown. In this unique situation we now have time to be sonic detectives in our own homes. 

Consider : the relaxing hum of your fridge, the way the tap squeaks when it is turned off , the toy box being opened quickly , Lego being spilt , the slide of the bedroom window , our loved one walking in a room above us , the owl that moves near the house at 2 am, the birds that now seem more active since we are in doors, the small tree in the garden who's leaves are moving. 

We all have our own set of sounds and now is the time to reassess our sonic environment both in and outside.

We are trying to get funding to launch a listening passport online as:

• Downloaded-able PDF version 
• Interactive Online Version 
• A physical Book 

This document is the same size as a passport available online and as a printed copy that isolated members of public can access and set with the tasks related to listening and position and positive emotion. 

This specially designed document will allow for immersive and reflective listening to the isolated  environment, helping to gather assets  and the responses from this will allow me to  produced  a national sound map of listening life under isolation.

This funding will help also create a digital online innovative experience  named ‘The Digital Listening Passport’ which supports those who are lonely, in isolation and improves wellbeing via sound therapy.

This online creative wellbeing tool will allow the user to re-engage and reassess through focused listening tasks with their own sonic environment and identify sounds that they value as hopeful and positive. 

The resulting positive emotion enables immersive and reflective listening to the isolated environment, helping to build content to produce an international sound map.

This new invocation of  sonic health  responds immediately to the needs of the current Covid 19 situation of isolated people.

The project has huge social benefits for those in Cornwall including intergenerational, shareable experiences that go beyond the user and helps build an empathic digital community under lockdown.  Through The Digital Listening Passport we will also be building a unique, historic document for the future. 

http://www.listeningpassport.org 

( Here is a test example of how the Digital Listening Passport world map would function : http://map.listeningpassport.org/testmap.php )

The funding means that The Digital Listening Passport will become a friendly online user interface for isolation and anxiety, becoming a digital resource for mental health by creating an online platform where people can share sounds they assign positivity to.

The product will then have the potential to support:

• Blue Light Emergency Services
• Reduce anxiety (PTSD) and to effect amplified focus in workplace resilience 
• Health & Medical Care
• Palliative care, transition between home and nursing home, provision of aftercare in mental health
• Education / Behaviour
• Improved learning in schools (morning mood registration), positive change and conscious reflection in prisons
• Business to Commercial - Domestic & Commercial
• Lifestyle management, identity encryption, personal profiling, search and discovery 

The use of the listening Passport  can show the impact sound has on the above-mentioned sectors: 

·       Reduced stress experienced by patients, families and staff

·       Reduced recovery times 

·       Shorter work sickness absence 

·       Improved team management 

·       Improvements in work outcomes

·       Enhanced quality of service provision 

·       Improvements in job satisfaction and staff retention

·       Improved healthcare experiences

I see The Listening Passport being intergrated into  every day activity:

·       To integrate generations and communities in isolated areas 

·       To make new and easily accessible sonic wellbeing digital tool kit 

·       To introduce wellbeing experience as part of a home resilience tool kit practice 

·       To value and empathize with communities 

·       To combat effects of loneliness and prevention of possible self-harm and potential suicide 

·       To navigate harmful negative thoughts and allow new pathways of meditative motivation  

·       To allow for memory sharing activities as family intervention

·       To reduce levels of stress within the home and bridge the gap to the workplace

·       To reduce work absences due to sickness

The funding  will specifically help build the first version of an Interactive Submissions Map. This means people can upload their own recordings via the website, which in turn uploads the sound contribution on to the playable world map. Each submission will be viewable on its geographic location and playable.

Submissions have come from as far as Ecuador, Malta, Sweden and of course more locally Cornwall. This is an indication of the global attraction / reach the project has. By extending the experience by creating elements of online “SUBMIT and EXPLORE“ functions, I can then build a world online interactive library by using ping IP, GPS location grab which will contribute to content of an explorable visual data map.

This would be introduced as a simple data capture form and file submission which also duel feeds into the Instagram account as well as the interactive world map, meaning the project becomes a self-sustainable wellbeing digital resource. 

This project  explores how digital technologies can improve health and wellbeing , as the activity deploys a positive focus during Coivd 19 isoaltion and lockdown by the aid of digital activity through the use of domestic readly avaible technology. 

This process engages the user with changes in their own emotions by encouraging taking ownership of creative interventions through reassessing the role of their own technology and it’s use with The Digital Listenging Passport .  

Further collaboration with academic researchers to study the interactive world map in terms of geotagging, times and locations in line with the type of submissions would build a profile of how Covid 19 is effecting people and if there is a parallel in the growth of the disease and the data we capture.