OUTLANDS is a network of organisations, producers, promoters and venues who develop, support, produce and promote performance-led experimental music activities. Network membership offers the opportunity to be part of an active, connected national community.
The Lubber Fiend is a DIY music and events space in Newcastle upon Tyne, opened in May 2022. They are one of the cities newest independent small-mid sized venues with a current capacity of 140; a DIY music space, a bar, a radio studio and a workshop. They can be a cinema, a place to host markets, record and art fairs, talks and other performances, and encourage those with ideas for the space to get in touch.
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33-33 is a record label and events producer creating exploratory music and arts events in unique spaces around the globe.
ame (art music experiment) C.I.C is an artist-collective organisation supporting experimental art, sound art & music scene in the north of England. Since 2017, they have run over 100 concerts, installations, exhibitions, artist residencies and educational workshops, collaborating with creators and other organisations in and outside of their venue home.
Another Sky is a new London-based festival celebrating experimental music from the SWANA (South West Asia & North Africa) region and diaspora – 2023 was our first edition; 2024 will be our second. Join us in listening, in watching, in dancing and in connecting for three days and nights. We’ll present composed, improvised and electronic music; short films and moving-image works; new commissions; workshops and an independent label & publisher fair.
Another Sky is co-directed by Sam Salem (composer; co-founder Distractfold Ensemble; RNCM) and Emily Moore (Southern Bird artist management & production; former co-director Kammer Klang).
Arctic Circle’s Daylight Music has, for over fifteen years, become an important part of London’s live music scene, with a weird and wonderful mix of musicians presenting ideas and storytelling in music and sound, alongside delicious cake, in some of the most splendid and iconic venues.
Founded in 2001, Bad Timing exists to create unique live music, sound and art events in Cambridge, making regular events happen in venues of all kinds and in other unusual spaces — wherever they can be made to happen. BT brings touring artists to the city from across the world and works with a core of experimental and innovative artists based in Cambridge and beyond, making connections and seeking out performance opportunities. BT is interested in live events beyond the ‘gig’ format and has worked with many of the city’s visual arts organisations to develop its own cross-arts projects and provide opportunities to other artists and musicians to work in new ways.
Bad Timing co-partners with Cambridge Junction and has facilitated Outlands touring workshops and promoted the touring commissions since 2018.
Since 1999 Beat13 have produced art, music, events and happenings. Beginning life as a website showcasing a collective of creators in Birmingham, the activities orbiting artist Lucy McLauchlan and audio-visualist Matt Watkins have developed exhibitions, murals, installations, AV shows, films, a gallery, workshops and international collaborations.
Mothwasp is Matt’s experimental music/AV project which has performed at festivals such as Animated Dreams/Black Nights (Estonia) Flatpack (UK) Supersonic and Supernormal (UK). With a stark aesthetic – oblique, distorted and serendipitous – live performances often involve defunct analogue AV technologies, field recordings and homemade electronics.
Beiyi Wang is a London-based interdisciplinary artist whose practice centers on healing arts, installation, sound, performance, and socially engaged work. Emerging from embodied observation and ritual interactions with natural phenomena, Beiyi’s projects foster sensory awareness and collective consciousness. Their work explores the intersection of sound, somatic practices, and acoustic environments to create spaces of attentive stillness, where simple, intentional actions reveal profound encounters with presence and temporality.
Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival (BFMAF) is an artistically ambitious, accessible and inclusive organisation for new cinema and artists’ moving image.
Based in North Northumberland, the Festival leads through collaboration and research. With a resolute commitment to peer support, artistic production and community development, the Film Festival is recognised for its innovative programming and critical engagement.
As if to answer the question ‘what can moving images be and do in this disquieting moment?’, BFMAF suggests they can be time machines, maps, love letters, poems, ghosts, fever dreams, missives, manifestos. They can also explode.
— Elena Gorfinkel, Art Monthly
A new exciting music and art festival that aims to champion, support and promote those often overlooked, on the fringe, curious, exciting and fun performers from all practices and backgrounds.
Based in Sunderland, UK. Their plan is to create an open minded 2 days of wild and wonderful adventurous sounds and performances, alongside a warm welcoming atmosphere.
Britten Pears Arts is a pioneering cultural charity based in Suffolk. It emerged from the determination of composer Benjamin Britten and his partner, singer Peter Pears, to ensure that everyone could enjoy and experience music. Britten Pears Arts aims to continue their legacy to develop talent, celebrate their heritage and engage with communities. Britten Pears Arts uses music to transform people’s lives, to bring communities together and enhance daily life, wanting the arts to effect powerful positive change in and for society, or,as Britten himself would have put it, making the arts “useful.”
The organisation has a long history dating back to when Britten and Pears founded the Aldeburgh Festival in 1948 and moved into The Red House in Aldeburgh in 1957. It became Britten Pears Arts in April 2020 when Snape Maltings, formerly Aldeburgh Music, and the Britten-Pears Foundation, that ran Britten and Pears’ estate, merged. Today, Snape Maltings and The Red House have become cultural destinations. There are independent shops, art galleries, restaurants and cafés, as well as the world-famous Snape Maltings Concert Hall. 100% of the profits from these businesses go towards the charitable work of Britten Pears Arts.
BULLYACHE is a working class collaboration between friends and artists Tylor Deyn and Jacob Samuel. They both choreograph, direct, score and conceptualise all of their own work.
BULLYACHE is the title and character through which they explore and experiment with music, dance and performance. BULLYACHE is in their parents’ makeup: flashing between acoustic balladry and rave somnambulism while feeling comfortable in neither, a hyper regurgitation of capital expectations.
Cambridge Junction is the welcoming home of original arts, entertainment, and creativity, sharing the power of live performance since 1990. At Cambridge Junction we invite you to be part of something extraordinary.
We welcome everyone to share our love of the arts, music, comedy and creativity in all its forms. We work with young people and local communities and artists to make radical, inclusive and engaging shared experiences. As a charity and social enterprise we believe in the importance of removing barriers so everyone can take part in creative opportunities.
As well as our programme of arts and popular culture we work intensively with young people and local communities on inclusive projects and events to ensure even more people share in the benefits of being part of something.
Centrala is an independent artspace and venue in the heart of the cultural area of Digbeth, Birmingham.
Centrala was launched in 2012 and has gone onto establish itself as a nationally and internationally recognised centre for Central and Eastern European art and artists. We are now the only publicly-funded gallery of our kind and the only advocate for Central and European art and artists outside London. Our mission is all-embracing: we are powerful advocates for social integration, bringing together diverse audiences under one roof to share, explore, debate and connect with high quality art and events. We strive towards our vision of a society where Central and Eastern European communities are welcomed and integrated, and where their art, culture and heritage are recognised and understood.
Centrala’s physical space allows them to host an innovative experimental music programme from all sections of society. Centrala hosts and collaborates with local and national organisations performances and networks , from Basque Grindcore bands, Radio 3 performances to Queer electronic nights.
At Cobalt Studios experimental, harder-to-place, DIY or outsider music holds an important place as part of their wider creative programme. They provide a supportive platform for emerging and established experimental practitioners to test new ideas in an intimate, acoustically rich environment, through curated gigs, collaborative residencies, workshops & late-night dancefloor sessions. Cobalt champions adventurous sound that challenges conventions, connects communities and expands the possibilities of what music can be.
Established, built and run by artists, Cobalt has been slowly evolving since 1999, now offering 14 affordable artist studios and community co-working. They run a six day a week multi arts program 33 weeks of the year and are planning to open more studios dedicated to music, community radio, open access recording studio, workshop space and additional events room.
Creative Crawley is a growing creative arts charity (CIO) set up in 2021, that brings arts and culture to life in everyday spaces across Crawley, West Sussex. They work in partnership with local, national and international artists to co-produce a free year-round programme of creative activities and artistic learning opportunities, with a mission to make arts and culture open to all in Crawley, and for creativity to become part of everyday life. They want visitors to see Crawley as a lively and welcoming place full of different cultural experiences. They support and celebrate artists and people who work in the creative industries, and since 2021 have engaged with over 40k audiences, 9k participants and 424 artists.
The visible elements of Curious Ear are concerts of improvised and experimental music in Manchester. Curious Ear was started in 2017 by David Birchall and Andrew Cheetham.
In 2022 they are running a series of evening and Saturday afternoon gigs and workshops supported by Art Council England at Ascension Church in Hulme.
Daniel W J Mackenzie produces work that explores various notions of listening to music and sound, combining composition, improvisation, non-musical sound and field recordings. Despite a broad range of tools and processes, there are consistencies in the nuances with which the work is constructed and presented, and the substantial presence of deep emotion and atmosphere. As a sound artist he has been presented internationally, working with sound sculpture, multichannel sound, sound collage and conceptual visual art, in installations and exhibitions that refine the approaches towards noise, quietude and melody that define his released music. His artistic studies are driven by conceptual and academic investigations into the phenomenology of listening and engaging with sound and subtle stimuli.
Daniel is increasingly influenced by the globalisation of sound and the role it plays in forging connections, circumventing borders and transporting listeners. He also draws influence from notions of entropy and dissolution, seeking to mirror a resistance to defined categories across his work. His wider activities and curation – which spans music, sound, sound art and film – reflect this approach. Daniel also creates visual art and design work in a variety of physical and digital mediums.
De La Warr Pavilion is a pioneering centre for the arts. A place where everyone can experience contemporary exhibitions, events and entertainment in an iconic Modernist building by the sea, on England’s south coast. They offer innovative and integrated cultural programmes that are accessible and relevant to the world in which we live. Their regular experimental music programme Dear Serge showcased the best in cutting-edge live music, performance and art.
DLWP were the lead organisation responsible for bringing the network to life and managed it from 2017-20. They produced Outlands touring commission Fracture Patterns in July 2019.
We give special thanks to Stewart Drew (Director and Chief Executive) and Pippa Moore (Head of Fundraising) who have both been instrumental in the ongoing success and development of our network.
Decolonise Fest is an annual London-based, volunteer-run, non-profit DIY punk festival collectively organised by and for punx of colour. Thier collective is made up of activists, militant community organisers, musicians, and artists that came together to hold our first festival in 2017.
Decolonise Fest centres the experiences of punx of colour, who they define this as people who are descended (through one or both parents) from the original inhabitants of Africa, Caribbean, Asia, Middle East, Latin America, Australasia, North America, and the islands of the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Ocean, and of Romany Gypsy or Traveller heritage.
Easter Ear (previously The Norfolk and Norwich Sonic Arts Collective or NNSAC) is a not-for-profit organisation led by a small group of Norfolk-based artists, musicians and improvisers.
Focused on celebrating, promoting and producing improvised and spontaneous music Eastern Ear aim to bring new music to the region and to provide opportunities for artists and the wider community to participate in sonic art activity, from education to performance.
In September 2018 they embarked on their most ambitious project to date, partnering with the excellent originalprojects; to produce YARMONICS, Great Yarmouth’s first festival of sonic art and new music which was repeated again annualy since.
Ebor Studio Group are a growing collective of professional artists and designers based in a heritage mill in the Pennine village of Littleborough, Rochdale. They believe in the power of the collective and each year commission members to make their work accessible to the public in exhibitions, talks, events and billboards. They facilitate collaboration on projects in partnership with organisations such as ACE, Manchester International Festival, Help Musicians and Outlands. Ebor Studio is a hub for artists in the region, and the varied membership includes internationally acclaimed artists as well as designers, new graduates, emerging artists, and community artists who all use their resources to enrich their practice and networks.
Electric Medway is an award-winning arts organisation working with communities and new technology across Medway.
We believe everyone is a digital storyteller. Our mission is to enable communities in Medway to be creative with technology and the arts, through activities that are open to all. Our vision is to make Medway an innovative and exciting place to live, work, learn and visit.
Every year, our flagship Electric Medway Festival provides free shows, exhibitions, workshops and trails for the public in libraries, schools, museums, shops and online, alongside work experience for young people.
Electric Medway Hack is our free skills development programme for local young people, artists and educators, providing masterclasses in the latest technologies including virtual reality, that are not normally accessible or affordable.
In 2022, we put live experimental music on a Soviet Submarine in Strood, made Blue Heritage Cranes talk via text message, and created Medway’s first augmented reality boat ride on the River Medway.
Founded in 2015 by Kevin Grist (Creative Director) and Janet Moore (Executive Director), Electric Medway is known for its strong partnerships and commitment to tell immersive stories from Medway’s diverse neighbourhoods, heritage and folklore
The Electronics Symposium runs community-driven events celebrating the intersection of electronic and analogue sound art. Led by neurodiverse and queer artists, the symposium features hands-on workshops, inspiring talks, and immersive live performances, creating a welcoming and inclusive space for all. With a focus on accessibility, collaboration, and fair compensation for artists, the events invite participants of all skill levels to explore creativity through innovative sound technologies and diverse artistic expressions.
Elliot Buchanan is a London-based artist, experimental music maker and cultural producer working across installation, sculpture, broadcast and performance. His work explores the emotional states of contemporary experience, tracing the social, political and cultural forces that shape the present through satirising or staging the real. Often working with assemblages of fixed and unfixed objects, he employs mise-en-scène to produce environments that make sense or unsense of world systems, particularly those which are invisible, clandestine or obscured. He releases music and performs under the moniker Careful Guest.
He also runs Intimacy, a curatorial project for artists working at the intersection of experimental sound and visual art from TACO! in Thamesmead. Primarily manifesting as monthly broadcasts on RTM.FM, the project supports artists to take risks and develop ambitious new work for broadcast, performance and exhibition. It also supports peer learning and critical exchange through a regular crit group for artists working with sound.
Fabrica is a multi-artform, contemporary arts organisation based in a former historic 19th century chapel, presenting a year-round programme of music events, film screenings, artist residencies and work-in-progress pieces, exhibitions, talks and networking events, arts engagement and wellbeing projects. As a charity, our mission is bring high quality art experiences to a broad audience, enabling more people to access it, enjoy it, participate and learn.
Founded in 1996, Fabrica has always maintained a space for new and experimental artists’ work, establishing a strong track-record in commissioning work for its site (a beautiful Grade II listed building) and creating short artist residencies in relation to specific contexts or themes. Drawing on this extensive experience, each year Fabrica offers Making Space opportunities which support and profile artists’ work-in-progress, photographic exhibition opportunities via the In Between Gallery, and paid artist residencies in collaboration with The Living Coast.
Moving forward their curated programme is focusing more tightly on sound-driven works that can utilise the unique acoustics of our space and through Outlands be a home for experimental and electronic music in the city.
Photo: Peter Hudson, In Colour [Tom Thistlethwaite].jpg
Fat Out have been curating shows for the raucous, weird & experimental since 2008. Since its very beginning, Fat Out has been a passionate champion of the underground scene both locally and internationally, dedicated to discovering new and adventurous music to produce captivating live shows for both artist and audience alike, aiming to promote a combination of challenging, intense, experimental and downright rowdy music.
In recent years, curatorial collaboration has become the core aim of the Fat Out agenda and we continue to seek to grow our knowledge of musicians, visual artists, record labels, festivals and likeminded promoters to work with on producing consistently unique events.
Fat Out have been an active member of the Outlands network since 2018 and hosted the touring commissions and workshops 2018-20. They produced Outlands touring commission Enso Sone in November 2019.
FFRWD is a Welsh avant-garde performer who fuses power electronics and found sound through splicing, dicing and heavy processing. The live set has elements of musique concrète, raw sound creation and spoken word together with a high degree of improvisation, where acoustic, electric and freeform atonal sounds evolve throughout the intense performance to create dark atmospheres.
The word ffrwd is Welsh for ‘stream’ as FFRWD responds to a location with a ‘stream of consciousness’. The name also references tape transport i.e. Fast Forward and Rewind, which is a nod to the musique concrète tape manipulators of the 20th century. The equipment used is a mixture of vintage and modern with a modular synth as the centrepiece. Electric toothbrushes, bells, piezo mics and dictaphones are also essential to make the immersive and subversive soundscapes. From musique concrète to granular synthesis, FFRWD likes to explore the endless possibilities that old and new technologies have to offer.
Concerts, exhibitions, workshops, meetups and more at various venues in Huddersfield. By weirdos, for weirdos. An open collective for anyone who identifies as queer or as belonging to a marginalised gender interested in creative technology. Meet ups usually include some kind of activity, e.g a presentation, skill share, small performance or themed discussion.
Simon East is developing two applications that use movement to produce sounds:
Flowfal is designed to be used by musicians and sound artists. It uses a set of Ableton Live plug-ins which respond to movements from smartphones or watches running the Flowfal app. It can be used to create sound for music performances, immersive installations, and dance pieces. An early version was used to in 800 Lifetimes created by Pell Ensemble in 2021. Flowfal was fully launched as part of the Sonar+D part of the Sonar Festival in Barcelona in 2023.
Movuku is designed for mass market users. Anyone who has a smartphone can use it to produce their own movement generated sounds for personal mindfulness and wellbeing activities. A sequencer to allow musicians to create their own Movuku movement sensitive songs will be available shortly. Movuku can also been used to create immersive installation soundtracks, the first example being for an installation called Dovetailing Responses in 2021.
Free Range is a charity presenting award-winning adventurous music and combined arts events in Canterbury with a policy of free-entry. It has helped to create a strong regional community of artists, audience members and organisations that care about adventurous culture, through presenting genuinely independent cultural events of the highest quality in an informal, playful and provocative way.
Adventurous culture encourages us to see and hear familiar things in a new light. Cultivating an openness and curiosity towards difference is important in the world right now. Free Range events are for everyone.
Full of Noises is a sound art and new music organisation based in a public park on Cumbria’s Furness Peninsula. We produce and commission new work from contemporary composers and sound artists through a programme of residencies, performances and public realm installations.
Since forming in 2009, we have produced over one hundred events, including seven biennial festivals, showcasing new work by over two hundred artists. Starting life in the former canteen building of a Trident submarine plant, Full of Noises has hosted artists ranging from Faust, AGF, Hildur Gudnadottir and Tetsuo Kogawa to Laura Cannell, Lee Patterson, Lee Gamble and Ryoko Akama. Touring events have taken place in venues including London’s Cafe OTO, the Liverpool Biennial, the Sao Paulo Biennial, Beacons Festival and National Trust Castles in the Lake District. Full of Noises has been an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation since 2011.
Fuse Art Space is a gallery, art space, performance venue and shop in Bradford city centre. Founded in 2014, Fuse produces and hosts exhibitions, artist talks, film screenings, workshops and performances, and stocks a wide range of art books, magazines and other objects of artistic merit. They host concerts of a wide range of music on a regular basis.
Fuse have been a member of the Outlands network since 2018 and hosted the touring commissions and workshops 2018-20. They produced Outlands touring commission DRIFT in November 2018.
Gary Wilkinson is a composer and visual artist who creates orchestral music using cutups, layers and loops of public domain classical pieces.
Exploring subjects such as Alcohol Fuelled Violence, Fixed Odds Betting Terminals, Cannabis Farms and Cage Fights his work covers stories and subjects from former mining communities that have been left behind and are now struggling through a ‘downturn’.
Gut Level is a not-for-profit venue, bar and members space in Sheffield’s city centre. The project aims to recentre the position of venues as community spaces, challenge big headliner culture, and support grassroots community organising by providing cheap space and equipment access.
The project started out as a DIY nightclub in 2019, giving them roots in dance music, club culture and a deep belief in the enriching value of non-commercial, community-focused debauchery. Money raised through events and membership subscriptions allow the org to offer subsidised space for grassroots organising, activism, and events.
Here’s a flavor of the kind of projects they support:
FLAW Collective – Free DJ & creative workshops for women and LGBTQ+ people
Anti Raids organizing – sharing skills and knowledge to resist immigration raids
QTIBPOC Film Club – a monthly meetup for QTIBPOCs in Sheffield
Time to be out – Providing support to LGBTQ+ asylum seekers
HTR Support Group – Knowledge sharing and support for folk on HRT
Sex Worker Meet-Up – Building networks of support within the SWer community
Gut Pleasers – a monthly low-cost communal meal
Founded by local independent arts magazine Good On Paper, Hidden Notes Festival takes place in multiple venues in the centre of Stroud, Gloucestershire – churches, galleries, art centres, and independent record shops. It focuses on presenting the works of contemporary classical, folk, electronic and avant-garde composers rarely seen together on the same stage, whilst also providing the artists with a platform to perform new music and collaborations in intimate spaces.
Alongside the music programme Hidden Notes also features film screenings, book talks, exhibitions, late night DJ sessions, installations and more, resulting in a packed and varied programme of art, music, literature and film.
Stewart Baxter is a composer, producer, and visual artist based in Hull. As a composer, Stewart’s work draws upon a deep interest in ambient music with a specific focus on found sounds, tape loops, and experimental audio that is firmly rooted in his sense of place. Stewart has completed commissions and collaborations for Humber Street Gallery, Absolutely Cultured, Sound and Music, and Real World Studio and is currently working on his debut release.
Stewart is a prolific and influential figure in his local music community, which places him perfectly to connect the dots in bringing together musicians from across the full stylistic spectrum currently working in the city. The result is an impressive catalogue of projects that are celebratory and generous. As the drummer for the band LIFE, his full-blooded playing underpins music that has received Album of the Year status on BBC Radio 1 as well as regular playlisting on BBC 6 Music.
Founded in 2014, IKLECTIK is a nonprofit creative organisation based in London, focusing on experimentation within sound, art, new media, emerging technologies and cross disciplinary works. Their research initiatives and collaborations with academic institutions inform curation and event selection. Through this, they explore processes and techniques whilst addressing social, political and cultural issues.
Their dynamic programme spans sound and music events, workshops, residencies, talks, panel discussions, installation work, film screenings and readings aiming to catalyse education, growth and transformation within the community both in-person and online. Over the last 10 years they have hosted live performances from over 3000 emerging and established international artists across 1600+ live shows, 21 festivals and 23 fundraisers.
IKLECTIK is a non-profit community interest company (CIC) since 2018.
Interior Motive is Jennifer Lucy Allan and Al Cameron. We are specialists in art and music writing and production and run informal mentoring partnerships and workshops. Our 2024-25 mentorship programme will support eight artists and groups to develop the writing and planning skills they need to access support, funding and other career development opportunities.
‘For ION spiritual and musical explorations are one and the same. By adopting a consecrated creative process he is able to bind together his ritualistic practises with the playful nature of sound experimentation. Labyrinthine ambient textures, field recordings made during his pilgrimages, and instrument selection of primeval roots all sew together in enchanting reminiscence of the archaic. A delicately woven tapestry emblematic of the fourth world genre.
ION symbolises the vestiges of our pagan-spiritual past, an untiring evocation of our original nature by means of multidisciplinary rite. Garbed in vestments and channeling from within the circles cast through his set design, he shimmers ardently in sustenance of the divine ancient.’
Jane Pitt is an artist based in Kent, UK. She makes site-responsive analogue and digital works that include sound, voice, image, text, installation and performance sited in unusual public spaces, including land, water and moving vehicles often in active participation with the public.
As JanePittProjects she initiates collaborations with other artists/disciplines, most recently Exchanged Tides & Echo Exchange with artists from Brazil & UK. Her work evokes a heightened awareness of environment and encourages a curiosity in the complexity of a place through sound, landscape and language.
Jessica Beechey, a Cornish sound artist, performer, sound designer and live sound engineer based between London and Cornwall.
A Falmouth University BA(Hons) Creative Music Technology graduate, she is currently in her final year of MMus Sonic Arts at Goldsmiths, University of London. Working primarily as a Sound Artist, she performs and produces works within the realm of minimalism and drone music, using field recordings and interactive & generative means of creation to explore natural environments. She performs under the alias Yiskāh.
KAREN {FRANCES} ENG makes art that straddles analog and digital media. She is fascinated by all kinds of art-making technologies, and her practice has taken her from traditional letterpress printing to still and moving lens-based work to large-scale animated projections on medieval buildings.
A longtime participant in multiuser digital worlds, she’s currently exploring the possibilities of VR and cryptoart – under the name oculardelusion – as tools of expression and collaboration.
KARST was founded in 2012 by artists who wanted to develop an artist-led space in Plymouth to produce and show the best international contemporary art. In less than a decade, they’ve grown to become the largest independent gallery in the South West with a reputation for being edgy, provocative, and challenging. Based in an iconic industrial building, they think beyond walls and invite projects from anywhere where art, ideas, and life meet. The space affords time to think and ask questions, is an experimental workshop, a safe place to take risks, and a place for ambitions beyond defined outcomes.
KARST have been a member of the Outlands network since 2018 and hosted the touring commissions and workshops 2018-20.
KOGG is an experimental electronic music collaboration between Selena Kay and Cerys Hogg, based in London and Essex. With roots in classical contemporary composition, jazz improvisation and visual art, KOGG integrate their influences, presenting a unique high-energy, multi-sensory performance. Combining live electronic wizardry, DIY contraptions and eye-popping visuals, with hammers, spanners and elastic bands, KOGG create a weird and wonderful world of off-centre melodies and elastic rhythms.
KOGG have played venues such as IKLECTIK and The Moth Club in London, performed at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, and been commissioned by Britten Pears Arts to write and perform at the Aldeburgh Festival. KOGG are currently in the final stages of producing their debut full-length album ‘Mechanista’.
Lost Property is an arts and events collective based in Brighton, UK, which primarily creates music, sound and art events that take place in unconventional and evocative spaces.
Alongside Fort Process, the major festival held every two years, we organise film seasons, all-day experimental music events, and one-off special concerts celebrating sound art and music. We also provide opportunities to learn through workshops hosted by diverse artistic practitioners, commission installations and new work.
Magnus Westwell is a Scottish artist and director working with choreography, composition and performance. Spanning the euphoric and desolate, Westwell’s work seeks to understand and express states of cathartic transformation through embodied sound.
Exploring cycles of liminality, transcendence, and absence, Westwell creates ethereal worlds where movement and sound evolve in close dialogue, shaped by an interest in thresholds – moments where sustained tension, repetition, and risk push performers and audiences toward a tipping point. Their work has been presented widely across Europe and the UK, including Sadler’s Wells Theatre, ICA, Britten Pears Arts, Cafe OTO, Goldsmiths CCA, Amsterdam Dance Event, and Number 1 Main Road Berlin, with digital work published via Nowness, Sadler’s Wells Digital Stage, and FACT.
Born 1979 in Sweden. Michael is a free artist, specialized independent musician, art photographer, painter, sculpture builder.
MK Gallery hosts changing exhibitions of international cutting edge contemporary art as part of a dynamic, diverse and stimulating programme including film, experimental concerts, and thought provoking lectures. MK Gallery has hosted a long standing experimental music programme and locally renowned scratch night.
MK Gallery were an integral part of bringing the network to life and have been a member of the Outlands network since 2017. They hosted the touring commissions and workshops 2018-20 as well as the Joyous Thing 2020.
Particular thanks go to Niki Braithwaite (Head of Public Programmes) whose continued insight is indispensable to the network.
Moogie Wonderland is a participatory arts organisation based in Cornwall. We believe that anyone can illuminate their world by discovering their own brilliance. We want to enable anyone to make personal and creative breakthroughs that can shape their lives and the world around them by providing environments for artistic exploration.
We use Live Art as a tool to experiment, push boundaries and bring people together. This has taken many forms, including club nights, participatory music performances in established venues, costume installations in art galleries and collaborative projects working with young people, children and neuro-diverse artists.
Music to Come is an artist-run platform for experimental sound and music, based in Bristol UK. We foreground a collective approach, working regularly with a range of artists to produce projects, events, collaborations and tours in the UK and internationally.
NN Contemporary Art (NNCA) is an independent contemporary art space in the centre of Northampton which will reopen at 24 Guildhall Road in 2024. We work with artists at all stages of their careers to present an international programme of contemporary art and multi-disciplinary events.
Our curated gallery and offsite exhibitions follow seasons, finding different ways to approach ideas and questions, creating a cumulative experience for our visitors. We frequently commission new artworks from leading and emerging artists, publish books and editions and regularly work with national and international partners to co-commission touring new bodies of work. The artists we work with range from Venice Biennale Award Winners to emerging artists and recent graduates. Our events include artist talks, screenings, creative workshops inspired by the exhibitions and practical CPD for artists such as peer critique, business support, writing and art handling.
Nonclassical is a music promoter, record label and events producer presenting new classical, experimental and electronic music. Crossing genre and defying convention, they develop, produce and promote innovative music – supporting emerging artists and bringing new music to new audiences.
Founded in 2004 by composer Gabriel Prokofiev, Nonclassical began as a clubnight focused on presenting new music in non-traditional performance spaces. They have since presented events across the UK and worldwide, and their record label is home to artists including Tansy Davies, Aïsha Orazbayeva, Gabriel Prokofiev, Langham Research Centre, Tom Richards and many more – you can find their full roster here.
Nonclassical is based in London and led by executive director Natalia Franklin Pierce with a small, but perfectly formed team.
Profound Sound is an experimental music and sound festival that takes place in Folkestone annually. Curated by Folkestone Fringe in collaboration with Hot Salvation Records and Phantom Limb Records, the festival’s intention is to bring together the town’s community to collectively experience the energy that is instigated by live music performance. Here, the barriers between performer and spectator become more abstract and the collective joy of being immersed in music triumphs.
Spanning across more alternative forms of music and performance, Profound Sound incorporates workshops and intimate performances from local seasoned and emerging talents as well as featuring leading international and national acts in the experimental music scene. Ultimately, the festival serves as an opportunity for musicians and performers with varying backgrounds and influences to come together and experience avante garde sound in a unified and non-hierarchical way.
Established in 2004 and born out of Bristol’s unkempt music sphere, Qu Junktions is an off-grid international booking agency, management company and creative producer. They represent a wildly diverse assortment of Artists, helping them plot their own course through the contemporary music landscape and multi-disciplinary practice. They commission, develop and tour new Projects with a range of partner organisations and produce regular Events with a focus on Bristol.
Qu Junktions were an integral part of bringing the network to life and have been a member of the Outlands network since 2017. They produced Outlands touring commission with Matana Roberts & Kelly Jayne Jones in May 2018.
Radiant Heretic is Luke Pendrell, an artist and writer working across moving image, photography, sound art, performance, audio visual installation and immersive assemblage. His practice explores the edges of perception through encounters with ghosts, ruins and fragments, bringing together elements of art, science, philosophy and the occult to examine how meaning and order are constructed.
His work has been exhibited, performed and broadcast internationally at venues including Tate Britain, the ICA, the BFI, the Barbican, SXSW, PS1 New York, Latitude, CCA Glasgow, ICC Hong Kong and CalArts Los Angeles. He studied Fine Art Sculpture and Interdisciplinary Arts at Bretton Hall, University of Leeds, and holds an MA from the Royal College of Art. Pendrell’s collaborative projects include Antirom, Speculative Aesthetics, the Spectral Transmissions Research Unit and Hyena Collective. His sound works have been broadcast on Resonance Extra, Radiophrenia and Spirit of Gravity.
RIEKO (Rieko Whitfield) is a Japanese-born visual artist and composer in residence at the Institute of Contemporary Arts London, and formerly in residence at the Tate. She is currently preparing to release her sophomore EP Zakuro, a contemporary classical meets experimental pop project inspired by Asian mythologies of spiritual transformation – a series that began with her debut EP Regenesis in 2023. Her mesmerising live performances are at the heart of her oracular multi-disciplinary practice spanning music, ritual, embodied healing, and automatic writing. She is Founding Director of live art platform Diasporas Now.
ROAR (Rotherham Open Arts Renaissance) is a non-profit arts CIC based in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, with a mission to support and grow creative and exciting art. They believe they can help revitalize the area by supporting local artists in their professional growth and ambitions. By integrating the arts into the community and economy, they aim to help the arts thrive and enable artists to make a living.
ROAR is run by a small group of passionate people who believe that art is transformative and integral to the human experience. They operate as a membership based infrastructure organisation within the voluntary sector, and are funded as an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation. Their goal is to build a strong, lively art community where the definition of art is broader and more inclusive, where everyone sees art as essential. They aim to create strong art networks and connections across Rotherham, with stories and conversations being part of the national art scene. Additionally, by addressing important issues, they hope to contribute to a fairer and more compassionate society.
Robert Cervera is an interdisciplinary artist born in Barcelona, working between London and Lewes. He studied music at the Professional Conservatoire in Badalona (Spain) and graduated from the Royal College of Art with an MA in Sculpture in 2014. His work includes sculpture, installation, video and music, with a strong interest in materiality and our relation to it. He also builds tube structures that can be played as instruments. The sounds they produce form the basis of musical compositions, music coding and live performances.
He has recently performed in the UK (SPACE Gallery, London; Ikon Gallery, Birmingham; Iklectik, London; Danielle Arnaud Gallery, London) and in Spain (Eufònic Festival). He has shown in the UK, Denmark, Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal and Mexico. Recent solo exhibitions: Hiddenware at SPACE Gallery, London, 2025-2026; A Constellation of Conduits (with Andreas PM) at Danielle Arnaud Gallery, London, 2023; To Vent Invites Robert Cervera, Zabludowicz Collection, London, 2021; Ye_soft_pipes/play_on, Tangent Projects, Barcelona, 2020; Yes And, Kelder Projects, London (with Peter Lamb), 2019; Tomorrow Starts Here, La Escocesa, Barcelona, 2017.
Robyn’s Rocket is a series of Inclusive Conscious gigs. Robyn chooses a mix of artists with and without learning disabilities/ and autistic and non Autistic artists to play at each Rocket. Robyn’s Rocket currently visits Cafe OTO in Dalston, London.
RouteStock is a CIC that explores routes to uncover the roots of our fellow human in the streets we inhabit and further. In our modern global village we know everything about the person on the other side of the world and very little about the person next door. We’re dedicated to putting on arts and music events to bring communities together. It’s home is within The Hot Tin arts centre and cafe in Faversham, Kent.
Rowan Jones is a clarinettist and interdisciplinary artist whose work spans orchestral and chamber performance, contemporary music, and experimental sound projects. She is especially interested in cross-genre collaborations and creating work that blurs boundaries between art forms.
She has worked with ensembles including the English National Opera, Orchestra of Opera North, Orpheus Sinfonia, Wild Arts and the Britten Pears Contemporary Ensemble. As a Britten Pears Young Artist 2024/25 and London Sinfonietta Academy member 2023/24, Rowan is passionate about contemporary music and experimental practice.
In 2026 Rowan will curate an exhibition selected by Hypha Studios, bringing her commitment to imaginative programming and forward-looking performance into curatorial work.
Influenced by linguistics and performance theory, Roy Claire Potter is an artist who performs, publishes and exhibits. They often collaborate with musicians and sound artists for radio broadcast and music festivals. Across the wide range of their work that includes drawing, installation, experimental art writing, vocal performance and moving image, Roy tells stories built from fragmented, intense images that depict moving bodies or domestic scenes and architectural settings.
Roy’s interest in communication constraints, subtext and narrative sequencing is felt in the way they use fast-paced talking or reading speeds and restricted or partial views of space. Complicated social or group dynamics and the aftermath of violent events are common themes in Roy’s work, and are usually treated with a dark, sometimes wilful humour.
They have have recently presented work with Book Works, Serpentine, Bergen Centre for Electronic Arts (2024), PRIMARY (2022/3), BBC Radio 3 (2020), Tate Britain and Tate Publishing (2019). Roy has published two books of experimental art writing, Round That Way (Ma Bibliotheque, 2017) and Mental Furniture (VerySmallKitchen 2014) and recently a novel, The Wastes (Book Works, 2024) commissioned by artist Katrina Palmer for Arrhythmia, a series of artist books that explore ideas of being out of joint with the predominant social order. Shorter works are published by Dostoyevsky Wannabe, Hotel Partisan, Tate Publishing, and CCA Derry-Londonderry.
Live and studio recorded audio works are released by Cafe OTO’s OTOROKU and TAKUROKO labels, London (2022/2019); Sub Rosa, Belgium (2019); Chocolate Monk, Brighton (2017/ reissued 2018); and Fort Evil Fruit, Dublin (2015).
Roy has been a mentor for artists through CCA Derry-Londonderry, Tate Liverpool, Spike Island and DYCP, and is a writing tutor at the Arvon Foundation. They are a Senior Lecturer of Fine Art at Liverpool John Moores University where they programme MA Fine Art, and are represented by A plus A gallery, Venice.
Safehouse is Brighton’s long-running improvised music night. There are two main strands to the programme: a regular open session on every first Wednesday of the month in which musicians are randomly grouped into trios or quartets to play 10 minute sets through the night; and a monthly gig night which features touring improvising musicians as well as local groups. Both events are usually held at the Rose Hill venue in Brighton. There is also a regular monthly Safehouse Lewes group that meets on Sunday afternoons at the Con Club, following the same format as the Brighton open session.
Sami Fitz is a London based, British-American experimental pop and ambient musician whose sound is rooted in deeply emotive, introspective spaces. Her ethereal voice and expansive vocal range add a haunting quality that threads through each melody, capturing emotion with remarkable depth and nuance. With its raw, intimate production, Sami’s work creates a sound world that invites listeners to slow down and embrace the quiet beauty of human experience.
In addition to her music, Sami is a sound meditation practitioner, offering workshops across London at venues such as East of Eden, Battersea Yoga and the Natural History Museum. Using gongs, singing bowls, intuitive voice, and small percussion, she creates immersive soundscapes designed to help participants explore and connect with their inner worlds. Her practice blends music and wellness, offering a reflective space that taps into the subconscious and unlocks deeper emotional layers through the practice of stillness and simplicity.
Sami Fitz’s work has garnered recognition across various platforms: her track was recently featured on Paramount+’s DocuReality series The Strip, her work has been selected for Pukkelpop, and she has been honored with a Vimeo Staff Pick. Her previous projects earned the Public Vote Winner distinction for the Swedenborg Prize in 2020 and were named A Closer Listen’s Best Video of 2018. She has performed at iconic venues like Café OTO and has been featured in publications such as The Guardian and The Wire. She’s also had the opportunity to sing and record with Widt, Sarah Davachi, Leo Abrahams, Damien Rice, Aine O’Dwyer, Pauline Kim-Harris, Mara Carlyle, Black Square, Annea Lockwood, Seb Rochford, Teletextile, and Gloria Gaynor.
Simon Bradley is an ambulant sound artist based in West Cumbria, interested in edges and overlaps, particularly the interplay between structure and free improv, spoken word that moves towards and away from written text, meaning and non-meaning that emerges from found sound and synthesis. He is currently engaged in an Arts Council-funded experimental investigation into Ambisonics and Geomagnetics, looking at ways of arranging sound spatially for performance and installation based on global and local geomagnetic data. He has a long and varied past working solo and collaboratively with oral history, music and walking-based sound art using a variety of media including field recordings and locative/GPS approaches. Always interested in unlikely transdisciplinary sound-based collaborations.
Sound and Music is the UK’s national organisation for new music, and a charity. Our mission is to maximise the opportunities for people to create and enjoy new music.
Sound Art Brighton is an independent initiative that celebrates the presence of sound art in Brighton, UK. Building on the wide interest this art form has attracted in the city, they promote the diversity of sound in its intrinsic relations with other arts and the everyday.
They reach out to all practitioners and facilitators engaged in this hybrid art form and who contribute in their sonic ways to Brighton’s urban environment and communal life. Their activities include city-wide events, a partner network, an interactive website and research projects.
Sound Arts UK is a digital platform promoting the sonic arts of the UK and Ireland. They compile listings for sound art exhibitions and events happening across the British Isles and publish weekly on Instagram and via our Pink Loudspeaker newsletter. They are volunteer-run team who formed in 2023 to promote and celebrate the work of the UK’s diverse and under-represented community of sonic artists.
SPACE21 is dedicated to experimental music and sound art, where listening is an active practice. Through its curated sound archive, SPACE21 connects artists and audiences, fostering engagement with evolving sonic forms. The platform hosts performances, workshops, and archive exhibitions that encourage artistic exploration and collaboration. By supporting both emerging and established creators, SPACE21 cultivates a vibrant community devoted to innovation in sound. Its initiatives extend beyond traditional boundaries, inviting the public to experience sound in new and unexpected ways.
The Spirit Of Gravity is Brighton’s longest-running electronic & experimental music night and has been providing a space for experimental electronic music since 2001. Founded by local live art liberationists Nick Rilke and Tony Rimbaud of Maphead Productions. It was a night intended to present Maphead’s latest music project Malevich, which needed a stage for the unique electronic collision of spoken word and unspeakable sounds. Never intending to be a purely solo showcase, Rimbaud and Rilke set about pulling, kicking, screaming and sampling other like-minded artists into the fray. Thus, enlisting to the cause were Spirit of Gravity co-namer and wired-up glass guru Dan Powell and no-noise free-formers Clarence Palmer. The first event was born.
To celebrate their 20th anniversary. they have re-released the fourth Spirit of Gravity compilation featured live recordings of people in the orbit of The Spirit of Gravity from way back in 2004.
SUPERNORMAL is an experimental festival of arts and music taking place at Braziers Park in Oxfordshire. Independent and uncompromising, it champions multi-faceted, exploratory art and music from the underground, margins and fringes to impart inspiring and engaging encounters beyond the everyday and the expected.
Supernormal offers a platform for artists, performers and musicians to work collaboratively and creatively for a new kind of audience seeking experiences out of the mainstream.
Starting as a one-day event in Birmingham in 2003, Supersonic Festival, curated and produced by Capsule , is an internationally renowned experimental music and arts festival. Occupying an exalted position at the heart of Birmingham’s cultural life, as well as attracting an international audience.
Supersonic Festival has been named as the UK’s premier experimental music festival, with rave reviews from The Independent, Arts Desk and The Quietus to name but a few, and topping The Guardian’s Guide to the best experimental music festivals in Europe. Bringing together live performances by some of the worlds most extraordinary artists, visual art, and audience participation to create a legendary one-of-a-kind festival. It takes place alongside a year-round programme of live events, exhibitions and kids gigs which present the highest quality new work in ways you least expect.
Always innovating around audience development, Supersonic has developed an industry-leading online program, delivering Sofasonic, the online version of Supersonic in 2020. They continue to develop new ways of reaching audiences online, currently with the hugely insightful ‘In Conversation’ series.
Supersonic were an integral part of bringing the network to life and have been a member of the Outlands network since 2017. They produced Outlands touring commission Yunohana Variations in June 2018.
TACO! is an artist-led space for research, production, and exchange located in Thamesmead, SE London.
TACO! is engaged with its local context whilst simultaneously supporting dialogue with artists and contemporary art. Are activities are experimental and collaborative, supporting artists through a programme of exhibitions, events, screenings, experimental music performances, broadcasting and publishing.
TACO! comprises of a gallery, bookshop and broadcast studio. All of these platforms provide opportunities for artists to present and distribute work.
The Breedling is the musical and creative outlet of Chris Spalton, a dabbler, doer, and maker of strange things based just outside Norwich, originally from the Fens. Born out of the bleak, flat landscapes and dark folklore of East Anglia, The Breedling turns all that damp atmosphere and mythic weirdness into heavy, immersive soundscapes. His albums Irukandji and Detritus (released on Wrong Speed Records) channel the dread and beauty of the Fens through slow, noisy, electro-doom rituals soundtracking the mythology of the flatlands.
Alongside the music, Spalton is also an author, illustrator, and filmmaker. He wrote The Eelman Chronicles – a comic about his dad, the last eel catcher in the Fens, and Apparitions of East Anglia, a guidebook exploring the region’s folklore and folk horror. He’s created videos and artwork for bands including Hey Colossus and Part Chimp, and regularly gives talks on folklore, design, and creativity connecting people, stories, and landscapes in unexpected ways.
Everything he does, from the music and drawings to the stories and talks, s rooted in the same murky marshes and mysteries. The Breedling is where all those threads meet: folklore, noise, and the eerie power of the East Anglian landscape.
The Hotel is a curatorial/publishing house established in 2024, founded and directed by Henry Cyer, with distribution by Central Bazaar. Henry Cyer is an artist based in London. Works include London Fields, Roots of Empathy and Gaia One. Cyer has performed live at Barbican, Ormside Projects and Mayhem Kbh.
The Lubber Fiend is a DIY music and events space in Newcastle upon Tyne, opened in May 2022. They are one of the cities newest independent small-mid sized venues with a current capacity of 140; a DIY music space, a bar, a radio studio and a workshop. They can be a cinema, a place to host markets, record and art fairs, talks and other performances, and encourage those with ideas for the space to get in touch.
In partnership with The Radiophonic Institute, PRS Foundation & The Daphne Oram Trust, The Oram Awards is a platform for innovation in sound, music and related technologies to elevate the work and voices of women, Trans and Non-Binary music creators.
Named after Daphne Oram, one of the founding members of the original BBC Radiophonic Workshop, the awards aim to build on her legacy. Along with other women of the workshop, including Delia Derbyshire, Glynis Jones, Jenyth Worsley, Maddalena Fagandini and Elizabeth Parker, Oram played a vital role in establishing women at the forefront of innovation in newly-emerging audio technologies not only in the UK but around the world.
The Spectral Transmissions Research Unit is a collaboration between Ben Branagan and Luke Pendrell, dedicated to constructing, receiving and transmitting Spectral Assemblages, producing both temporal artefacts and modes of experimental cognitive practice. Each transmission develops through Spectral Assemblage, where fragments of everyday life gather in stochastic accumulators of latent potential, forming temporary constellations of association and alignment.
These fluid states of indeterminism generate unexpected configurations, ‘Denkinstruments’ enabling alternative modes of thought and meaning. Before transmission, assemblages are collapsed or fixed. Broken symmetries crystallise into temporal moments. Fluidity is sacrificed to enable closer inspection of the encoded relations and emergent entanglements.
Tong Niu is a London based Chinese sound artist and researcher whose evocative practice centers on deep listening immersive technology, and spectral aesthetics. She works across installation, performance, and digital media to transform silence and memory into “sonic dreamscapes,” reclaiming erased voices-especially those of women and spirits–from forgotten histories. Rooted in feminist theory, spectral ethnography, and psychoacoustic exploration, her projects create sensorial experiences that surface emotional resonance within invisible systems.
Her research further highlights how natural ecology, ambient sound, experiential design, and cybernetic-psychedelic aesthetics intersect to unearth therapeutic and emotional narratives through field recordings.
Tong crafting “rhythmic bells’ from wandering sounds, constructing immersive soundscapes that reconnect listeners with environments, heritage, and hidden trauma. These pieces probe marginalized cultures and ephemeral collective memory, offering dynamic sonic dialogues meant to foster psychological healing and re-tune our perception of inner and outer worlds.
Tŷ Cerdd exist to bring the music of Wales to audiences across the nation and to the rest of the world. Through their work they protect the legacy of Welsh music of the past, nurture Welsh music of the present, and drive the development of new composition. They support professionals and non-professionals, performers and audiences, to perform, compose and experience Welsh music.
The Digital Music and Sound Arts BA and MA at UoB are Outlands education partners.
The course is aimed at artists who are interested in exploratory, experimental and interdisciplinary approaches to sound, music, AV media, and sound arts practices and productions. Through creative practice-based research students will engage with musical composition and sound design productions, as well as focusing on the relationship of sound to other art forms and related media.
Wimborne Minster is a small town in Dorset, but has made a big contribution to experimental music, by virtue of being the birthplace of Robert Fripp. Indeed, Fripp once memorably described Wimborne as “The Centre of the Universe”, for reasons perhaps known only to himself. Wimborne does however have a claim to be the home of experimental ambient music, which Fripp developed through his adventurous use of tape delay and guitar, referred to as “Frippertronics”.
Wimborne Contemporary Arts seeks to keep the spirit of Fripp’s experimentation alive, by organising concerts and multi-media arts events in the town and the surrounding area. Recent events have included performances of works by La Monte Young, Cornelius Cardew, Pauline Oliveiros and John Cage, concerts by Gerauschhersteller and The Seen, a mini-festival celebrating a century of DADA, and a multi-media installation featuring underwater soundscapes of local rivers. WCA also regularly collaborates with Wimborne Community Theatre to produce site-specific sound art and theatrical events in the local area. We’re always interested to meet people who produce or listen to experimental music, so if you’re in the area, please get in touch!
Zara Truss-Giles (they/them) is a cross-disciplinary artist, producer, and technical engineer apprentice recognised for their dedicated and continuous work in community-focused experimental sound education. As a founder of distribution of power (dop), Zara has established a vital, learning-based platform aimed at dismantling barriers for marginalised and working-class artists in the electronic music scene.
Initially based in London with extensive links to the North East and North West, Zara brings a unique perspective to analogue synthesis, combining technical skills-sharing with a deep interest in intersectional histories, community healing, and ecological sound studies. Their career is focused on creating sustainable, inclusive spaces, having toured educational workshops and supported over 100 artists, working with partners including State 51, Nine Nights, and Iklectik Art Lab.