Simon Bradley - MA Sound Design
Breaking the Silence: Sackville Gardens Soundscape
Sound Designer and Artist, working across film, installation, and music production. I create atmospheric tracks that use symbolism, texture, and abstract storytelling to communicate complex themes.
My works include a short film commissioned for the Imperial War Museum to raise awareness of VJ Day, which combined archive footage with the recording of a 50 piece choir and was screened publicly across the UK, as well as a soundscape set to poetry based on the Manchester Ship Canal, which featured unconventional instrumentation and an original piano score.
For my MA project, Breaking the Silence: Sackville Gardens Soundscape, I have reimagined Sackville Gardens, a place connected to Manchester’s queer community, as an interactive installation exploring how the parks sonic identity can be recontextualised within a new space.
Through layered soundscapes inspired by the park’s memorials and atmosphere, the piece invites audiences to reflect on the visibility and resonance of queer voices within an urban setting, exploring the ways queer voices may be hidden or obscured within a busy urban setting.
My work features the Manchester Proud Chorus, a local gay choir, grounding the piece in community and amplifying its themes. Composed as three interconnected soundscapes across a day–night cycle, the installation shifts in texture and mood to mirror the park’s changing presence.
Audience participation triggers one of two soundscapes to fade in or out, symbolising the fluctuating visibility of queer histories and identities within public space, and allowing a different listening experience for each visitor. The triggers are through contact microphones, where I have programmed the detection of sound to act as an input to control the soundscapes.
