Sounds of the Cultural Quarter

Explore Leicester's Cultural Quarter through sounds from past and present. Track your location on the map and immerse yourself in the soundscapes to discover the Cultural Quarter from a different perspective.

Press the footsteps button to start the location tracker. As you walk around the area the sounds will then automatically play as you approach them and stop as you walk away. Press the button again to stop the tracker. The best way to explore the soundscapes is on foot around the Cultural Quarter. However, when the location tracker is off you can touch the map to hear what it would sound like at that location.

The first time you open the app the latest collection of sounds will automatically be downloaded to your device, enabling you to use it offline and reducing future bandwidth usage. It is recommended that this first download takes place over wi-fi.

Sounds of the Cultural Quarter has been commissioned as part of Affective Digital Histories: Recreating De-Industrialised Places, From the 1970s to the Present, a research project exploring the hidden and untold stories of people who lived and worked in former industrial buildings at two locations in the East Midlands: Leicester's Cultural Quarter and Glossop, a mill town in North Derbyshire. The project is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and is based at the University of Leicester. Phoenix and app developer Cuttlefish are project partners. The app makes use of Cuttlefish's Empedia locative media platform.

The app features a collection of sounds and recordings by Colin Hyde and Andrew Hill with contributions from Julie Attard, Jenny Bailey, Sam Fisher, Petrina Foti, Clare Hudson, Hywel Maslen and Lucy Stevens.