Hannah Kemp-Welch is a sound artist with a social practice. She creates works collaboratively and in community settings, often responding to social issues.
At the start of 2025, Kemp-Welch has been working with the young people at Art Block to explore sound and audio technologies. Art Block is a free, creative space on Sceaux Gardens Estate for local young people to connect, relax and express themselves.
They learned to use various types of microphones, exploring different sonic textures with geophones and hydrophones. Together, they created new soundtracks for experimental films using Foley techniques and examined radio as an activist tool by exploring the history of pirate radio. They built their own radio receivers and transmitters, listening for signals around the neighbourhood. Some of the group also presented their own podcasts and curated playlists that were broadcast across the estate.
Hear from Kemp-Welch in our interview with the artist and find out more about the project.
Can you tell us a little bit about your practice?
I have a few interlinking strands of practice – the running theme is that I’m a sound artist and I like to work collaboratively with others. I’m interested in DIY technologies and cultures of ‘making’. Since 2020, I’ve been a member of a feminist radio art group called Shortwave Collective; we have a design for a homemade radio receiver that we construct with community groups during workshops, that allows us to listen for fragile radio connections. The work is both practical and conceptual, and this theme of listening is a focus of my wider research. I often work with groups – perhaps I’m making a podcast with young people in a youth club, or working on an activist project with migrants – how this community gets heard is my primary concern.
What does having a social practice mean to you?
I find working with others to be exciting, enjoyable, and highly generative. In creative discussions, I often find ideas developing as we riff off each other. Of course, not every relationship turns out that way, but where there’s a shared commitment to equality, a mutual respect and desire to build something, perhaps coupled with enough confidence and trust to be able to share freely, something magic happens. Projects that allow me to spend time with individuals and groups and work towards a common goal are my favourites.
Image courtesy Shortwave Collective. Photo by Ivo Blackwood.
You’re particularly interested in radio and broadcasting. How did this interest come about? What draws you to audio broadcasting and radio as a medium?
Though I don’t come from a science background, something about the physics of radio transmission really appeals to me. Radio waves are a naturally occurring phenomena – they are electromagnetic waves within a certain frequency range, which might be emitted from the sun, from lightning strikes, from aurora… And humans have discovered their ability to ‘carry’ other kinds of waves. An audio signal, or another kind of data, can be attached to a radio wave and sent vast distances to be decoded at the other end. Radio waves carrying our sounds can bounce off the ionosphere and traverse the earth in seconds. Learning about this has made me infinitely curious and the process of transmission, and reception seems to be a kind of magic.
Are there any other sound artists or artists with a social practice who particularly inspire you and your work?
Yes! Loads!! I love the work of Sam Metz, Beverley Bennett, Edwin Mingard, Alex Parry, Kirsty Reynolds, Angharad Davies, Hector MacInnes… where do I stop? What draws me to their work is a deep level of questioning about the politics of this work. They have forms of practice that reach beyond the workshop itself, into how – through creative relationships – we could build solidarities and understanding and imagine better ways of being together. I host a monthly podcast called ‘Ways of Listening’, where I interview socially engaged artists about their practice – there’s some interviews with some of these artists online if you’d like to hear more.
Art Block, 2025.
Tell us about what you’re working on with the young people at Art Block.
At Art Block, I’ve been getting to know the young people who attend. Every week, I’ve brought some audio technology for us to play with and we’ve tried out different activities, to see which might interest the group. We’ve built a DIY radio transmitter and also a receiver, we played with Morse Code, we used different kinds of microphones and young people worked together to make radio shows. Some of the young people are into photography and filmmaking, so we used a reel of Super8 to make a short film as well.
Have you been surprised by anything from these sessions?
Young people’s music taste surprised me, haha! One group decided to make a radio show of love songs, and I laughed when their opening track was ‘Careless Whisper’. Overall, I’ve been taken with how young people have been open to trying new things, and some have found their niche. There’s definitely some future radio hosts within the group, and I was really impressed by how some of the group picked up the DIY electronics projects quickly and independently.
What can people expect from the micro-broadcast across Sceaux Gardens estate?
In the last session, we’ll use a short range radio transmitter to broadcast young people’s podcasts and playlists across the estate. There are five thematic playlists, where young people introduce the overall theme and each track, and two podcasts, each about an aspect of youth culture. It’s been fun to listen to them as they develop, and I hope that local residents tune their radios to our frequency on the day!
Art Block, 2025.
What are you working on now?
I’m working on a feature for BBC Radio 4, in which I travel to the arctic to listen to the sounds of the Northern Lights via homemade radio antennas. I’m about to start work with a group of activist parents and carers, who are collecting oral history recordings from a historic strike by nursery workers in the 1980s and campaigning for more and better access to childcare. I also have some projects lined up with Shortwave Collective… We are working on a 24 hour radio broadcast live from Cardiff with a local community arts organisation to celebrate the summer solstice.
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Art Block is funded by the Bukhman Foundation. With Additional support from Southwark Council and United St Saviour’s Charity.