The Favourite Sounds Project

This account of the favourite sounds project has been included as a chapter in the book Anthropology and Beauty, edited by Dr Stephanie Bunn and published by Routledge in January 2018. The favourite sounds project has for 20 years set out to discover what people find positive about the soundscapes of the cities, towns and neighborhoods where we live and how we interact with the ever-present sounds of urban life by asking the seemingly simple question, "What is your favourite sound of London, Beijing, Berlin, or… and Why?” The chapter covers the work of project from 1998 to the year 2015 in the cities of London, Manchester, Southend-on-Sea, Taranto and Berlin. People's responses to the question are discussed and comparisons through time and between cities are made. The results are revealing in surprising ways and suggested that we are far more effected by the details of our daily soundscape than we might normally expect.