TEASER
Daniela B. M. Elneff recording the sound of church bells at Struer Church
We are in search of the sound of history and look forward to sharing the sounds, stories, and listening experiences that hide behind the familiar.
SINCE THE LAST TIME
New project: The Sound of Everyday Life
SOKU, together with Resonerende Rum, Struer Museum, and Holstebro Museum, has been supported for the project The Sound of Everyday Life. Here we will work with everyday sounds: the sounds that give meaning and coherence for residents of Struer and Holstebro. Together with Resonerende Rum, we reach out and invite various citizen groups into the storytelling about what culture heritage is and can be. In a series of “improvisational communities,” we will collect and process everyday sounds so that we and our visitors get new ideas about what it means to inhabit the area. We look forward to learning more about how sound, music, and listening can be central to new forms of inclusion and community in museums.
The project is supported by the Danish Agency for Culture and Palaces’ development fund for museums’ outreach to new user groups.
New knowledge about museums’ podcasts
SOKU, together with Magasinet Museum, has studied museums’ use of podcasts. It has been several years since museums embraced the medium, and many of the country’s museums now have podcasts as part of their overall audience offerings. We asked five museums about their experiences with podcasts: what works and what doesn’t. Some museums, like the National Museum, are investing heavily in podcasts today, while others, like the National Museum of Denmark (SMK), are starting to look at other approaches and focusing on dissemination that can support museum visits more directly. Eight East Jutland museums have good experiences collaborating across museums on a podcast narrative that is larger than each museum’s own remit, and others, like the Museum of Contemporary Art, have in Podcast for Contemporary Art found something more than just a dissemination form—here the podcast becomes an extended exhibition space in close partnership with the distribution platform The Lake Radio.
National media surveys show that podcasts are becoming an increasingly used medium. But at a time when the museum reform has shifted focus to the number of visitors, the podcast medium can be challenging in the museum world. Is it still worthwhile to reach an audience that may not necessarily come to the museum? Most museums we spoke with think so, but the picture is not clear-cut, and in many places considerations of podcasts are included in a broader analysis of the museum’s digital dissemination. However, there is consensus that podcasts are well suited to in-depth, professional storytelling with long lifespans.
Looking at what it takes to succeed with podcasts in museums, the answers suggest you need to think long-term and anchor a podcast initiative both internally and externally. The number of listeners may seem low in some cases, but if a podcast project supports and elevates the museum’s knowledge- and dissemination work, there is great value to be gained. The same applies if you manage to establish good strategic collaborations, e.g., with producers or other museums: thus the museum is connected with other user groups beyond the usual.
You can read more about the study in the upcoming issue of Magasinet Museum.
Reflections for the summer’s big conference
SOKU’s international conference Sonic Cultural Heritage brought together researchers and practitioners across disciplines and traditions in August, opening up many nuanced discussions about what sonic cultural heritage is and can become. Thanks to Mariana J. Lopez, Meri Kytö, Heikki Uimonen, Carsten Seifferth, Alcina Coretez, James G. Mansell, Jakob Ingemann Parby, Jacob Eriksen, Anne-Sofie Udsen, and Rune Søchting for invaluable contributions to the conversation and to the development of the field.
After chewing over it all, center director Jacob Kreutzfeldt has thrown himself into an attempt to summarize and think further. You can read it here, where you can follow the complex balancing act between institutional and non-institutional cultural heritage practices, between material and immaterial cultural heritage, and between objects and archives.
Sonic Cultural Heritage conference
Sound in Museums – Conference in Portugal
Mads Kullberg and Jacob Kreutzfeldt attended the conference Sound in Museums in Mafra, Portugal, on October 17–19. There we had the opportunity to present our paper "Dumb Artefacts and Loud Occurrences: Sonic Cultural Heritage in Danish Museum Collection" to a highly competent audience, and we met many exciting researchers and museum people from around the world. The conference was the second in the Sound in Museums series—previously it was in Kolding as part of Sonic Days at Sonic College. We look forward to following Sound in Museums going forward. It proved to be a highly valuable forum focusing on the very issues central to SOKU.
Sound in Museums in Mafra, Portugal
FUTURE CONTRIBUTIONS FROM SOKU
Sound on Display: SOKU’s 2nd Network Seminar. Struer Museum, April 13, 2026, 11:00–16:00
SOKU’s 2nd network seminar focuses on sound as an exhibition and dissemination object. How can we direct people’s attention to sound that often sits on the periphery of attention? How do museums balance conserving objects with maintaining their function? And what new stories can we tell if we focus on sound and listening?
The seminar brings together SOKU’s professional network for a second time for talks and conversations about sonic cultural heritage. This time you will also be able to experience and hear about Struer Museum’s brand-new exhibition on B&O and the interaction between people, audio media, design, and society over a century. If you have anything to contribute on the topic, or know people who should participate, please write to us as soon as possible at [email protected].
Keep an eye on our website and LinkedIn profile, where the speakers will be announced gradually.
SOKU contributing sound design to Struer Museum’s new B&O exhibition
Struer Museum is developing a new exhibition about Bang & Olufsen, marking the company’s 100-year history. The exhibition focuses not only on products but on the interaction between people, audio media, design, and society over a century.
B&O’s radio adventure began in 1925 in Struer—the City of Sound. With the 100-year anniversary exhibition, the museum aims to take visitors on a journey into B&O within a space between media, local, and cultural history. The ambition is to create a modern and vibrant museum experience where visitors can reflect on everyday stories, be inspired by ingenuity and can-do spirit—and reflect on how audio media have shaped our lives over the last 100 years.
SOKU is currently contributing to Struer Museum’s upcoming Bang & Olufsen exhibition. In this context, Daniela B. M. Elneff is working on sound design for the exhibition and exploring, among other things, how the sound of electricity—and B&O’s ideas about technology, form, and sensoriality—can invite deeper exploration and curiosity among the audience.
We look forward to sharing more about the process and to experiencing how sound can open new entry points to the story of B&O, the importance of audio media, and our shared listening history.
Daniela B. M. Elneff working with sound design for the new B&O exhibition
Articles and presentations
- Look forward to the upcoming issue of Magasinet Museum. Center director Jacob Kreutzfeldt is co-editor of the museum’s theme on sounds in museums, and we promise plenty of good articles, including our own “The Sound is Everywhere—Just Not in Our Collections.” The magazine will be printed on March 2, and the articles will subsequently be available digitally. We’ll link from SOKU’s website.
- Also the other museum world’s magazine MiD-Magasin has a focus on sound in the upcoming issue, which is just around the corner. Their theme issue on Senses is coming soon, and you can find Jacob Kreutzfeldt’s article “Why Should We Listen to History.”
- And we look forward to contributing to the upcoming issue of Seismograf Peer. Our audio paper The Drum and the Community – unboxing sonic cultural heritage has been accepted for publication in the upcoming issue as Sonic Citizenship. We’ll follow up 😊
- Struer Museum event: May 5, 2026 at 19:00 for the conversation between Jacob Ingemann Parby from Copenhagen Museum and Jacob Kreutzfeldt from SOKU and Struer Museum: Soundmarks Through the Ages. Here you can hear about and listen to street calls, town drums, bell ringing, and much more…
IMPORTANT EXHIBITIONS AND INITIATIVES WE ARE INVOLVED IN
Cities and Memory has collected sound recordings from UNESCO World Heritage sites. Listen to the sound of World Cultural Heritage here.
And what does it sound like in Kyoto? You can find the answer in this impressive database with careful mapping of sound at 1200 street corners in central Kyoto.
Finnish research team SOMECO – Sonic Meditations and Eco-critical Listening is investigating the acoustic environments in six European villages. They follow up on similar studies first in 1975 and since 2000, creating unique knowledge. We’re eagerly following.
Hearing the Past: Reconstructing the Aural Heritage of Antwerp in the 19th Century. An interesting and ambitious project with a big-data approach to past sound environments.
March 18–21, 2026: “The Historical Ear: What is Auditory History?”. International conference in Paris. Read further here.
Please let us know if you know of an initiative that should be on this list in the next issue of the members’ newsletter. Write to [email protected].
Write to us if there are things you miss in the members’ newsletter. We are curious about how to best support an inclusive professional community. If you know something about it, we’re all ears!
