100 VOICES by SoundVoice
100 VOICES is an immersive sound and music installation in a birch wooden roundhouse. It is a snapshot of hospital communities, with one hundred anonymous voices heard as individuals and as a crowd. The piece was at UCLH NHS Foundation Trust in March 2024.
100 VOICES was created after five months of research, partnership, and conversations with staff and visitors in 12 hospitals across 4 NHS Foundation Trusts - Bristol, London, Cambridge, and Preston. 100 people reflect on their daily lives and work, their challenges, joys, inspirations, and losses.
The result is a unique and multi-layered snapshot of the NHS, expressed directly by people whose voices are rarely heard: those working in service, patients, visitors to local communities, and the invisible, extended workforce of the NHS.
Four Portraits - four newly commissioned songs - were interwoven within the spoken word recordings, which were then further embedded within an original musical score. Each song is voiced by a professional singer who plays a fictional character: the midwife, porter, manager, and patient. Each character explores what it means to have a voice, how we make ourselves heard, and how we listen to others.
100 VOICES was experienced within a specially designed structure, a birch wood cylinder, immersing audiences in 360-degree sound. 100 anonymous people were heard as individuals and in digital transformations as a crowd, as a flock of voices, as a sonic tidal wave.
You can listen to 100 VOICES here.
Please be advised: This work contains honest references to life in hospital including critical care and end of life.
If you are affected by any of the issues raised in this work, there are support services available at https://
100 VOICES Event
In March 2024, UCLH hosted a unique event inviting an exploration of what it means to have a voice in the NHS and how people listen to others and make themselves heard. The event included presentations by Hannah Conway and Victoria Hume, live music, and a visit to the 100 VOICES installation.
Hannah Conway is an Ivor Novella award-winning composer recognised for her dynamic collaborations bringing together diverse communities and world-class performing arts organisations. She is the Executive Director of Sound Voice, a company specialising in creating live and immersive music performance installations with interdisciplinary experts, people with lived experience and professionals from the healthcare, scientific, biomedical research and technology sectors
www.
www.hannahconway.co.uk
Victoria Hume is Executive Director of the Culture, Health & Wellbeing Alliance. She was an arts manager in the NHS for 15 years and is also a musician and researcher. She discussed how writing music with health professionals and people who have gone through particular experiences of ill health might offer different routes into these stories.
https://victoriahume.com/
https://culturehealthandwellbeing.org.uk/
About UCLH Arts & Heritage
UCLH Arts & Heritage is the hospital arts and heritage project that serves UCLH NHS Foundation Trust and its surrounding community and is funded entirely by charitable donations and fundraising. UCLH Arts & Heritage is committed to providing a welcoming, uplifting environment for all patients, visitors and staff through the use of a varied and stimulating arts and heritage programme. Its work aims to improve the patient experience, boost staff morale, increase engagement with the arts and celebrate the Trust’s unique heritage and community.
Since 2005, UCLH has worked to improve patient and staff outcomes through the Arts. It does this in a number of ways, including a changing exhibition and music programme, creative workshops on wards, artist residencies, commissioning site-specific artwork, and a staff culture club. UCLH arts and heritage receives its funding from UCLH Charity and the Friends of UCLH.
Website: https://
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