Voice Notes
Voice Notes is an international creative writing and sound arts project that shares and celebrates the voices of those who have experienced forced displacement. Exploring the role of the telephone in experiences of exile, it is led by Sarah Jackson, in collaboration with sound artist Hardi Kurda and refugee arts charity Compass Collective.
Featuring recorded phone calls left by young refugees and asylum seekers from around the world, Voice Notes investigates displaced voices, creative networks and transnational communication, as well as different modes of talking and listening across cultures. Celebrating multilingualism and diversity, our work is co-created with individuals and communities who have fled war, violence, conflict and persecution and yet who continue to offer stories of solidarity and hope.
Spotlight on Calling
The mobile phone’s capacity to connect people separated by conflict, poverty, disease and natural disaster suggests that it has the potential to operate as a ‘lifeline’ for the refugee. But rather than simply overturning distance and flattening relations of power, the smartphone’s relationship with forced migration is one of ambivalence.
Telephone technologies are bound up with oppressive structures of power, and many people are at risk of exploitation through the very device that they use to help them navigate their journey and maintain contact with their homeland. This means that as well as connecting people and cultures, telephones can reinforce the silencing of vulnerable communities.
Challenging the idea of technological mobility, Voice Notes explores the relationship between creativity, telephony and exile through multilingual creative workshops exploring modes of writing, talking and listening together.
Photo credit: Tom Platinum Morley (2024)
International Workshops
Through a programme of international creative activities, Voice Notes celebrates diverse voices and explores the role of listening in cultural exchange. Whereas some traditional writing workshops can exacerbate anxieties with regards to language and literacy levels, we hoped to move beyond the classroom and invited participants to compose, record and share their work using the mobile phone.
Our first set of workshops took place in October 2023 at Arbat Refugee Camp in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, supported by STEP. These were followed in November and December 2023 by workshops at New Art Exchange and Attenborough Nature Reserve in Nottingham, supported by Refugee Roots.
With further activities taking place across the UK and online, over 150 participants have now shared the possibilities and limitations of telephone technologies in navigating and communicating experiences of displacement. Central to our workshops is the ethos of creative collaboration, and in addition to developing new writing and performing skills, participants are encouraged to co-curate soundscapes by recording sounds and voices from their own environment.
Messages from around the World
If you could leave a telephone message for anyone, who would you call and what would you say?
Graphic Design by Ganna Bielcheva
Resources
Responding to the changing ways that we use the telephone, and the increasingly popular transmission of audio files by smartphone, we seek to engage refugee communities, NGOs, cultural partners, educators, artists, activists and members of the public with creative approaches to everyday technologies, exploring the ways that collaborative voice notes can open up our understanding of ethical networks and transnational communication, as well as shaping different modes of calling across borders.
If you, or your organisation, would like to develop similar activities, please download our resource kit, which includes a plan for a two-hour workshop, and outlines our principles for best practice in refugee arts. For more information and reflections on good practice, we recommend Creatively Minded and Refugees (2023) produced by The Baring Foundation and Counterpoints Arts.
Sound Installation
Our Voice Notes audio-installation, designed in collaboration with sound artist and composer Hardi Kurda, uses multidirectional speakers that are positioned to create a network of intersecting telephone messages. As visitors move around the gallery, they tap into stories of home and belonging, landscape and loss, and communication and connection. In turn, visitors are invited to shape new ways of thinking about sanctuary by contributing their own voice notes as part of our evolving telephonic soundscape.
The Voice Notes (2024/2025) sound installation has been exhibited internationally, with venues including Mufti Hammam as part of Space21 Sound Festival (Slemani, Kurdistan Region of Iraq), New Art Exchange (Nottingham, UK), Yorkton Workshops as part of Refugee Week 2024 (London, UK), Dr Guislain Museum featured as part of the International Conference on Culture & Mental Health: Refugees Conference (Ghent, Belgium), and Gallery North (Northumbria University, Newcastle, UK) as part of the What Are Words Worth 2U2? festival.
Sharing our Stories
You can hear some of the messages shared with us during our activities in 2023-2024 via the Voice Notes app, which is available on the web, as well as for download for mobile devices.
Our interactive Voice Notes app is also available here or you can listen to a short sample mix below.
Hold to Record: The Voice Notes Anthology
Featuring messages from twelve writers from Compass Collective and Counterpoints Arts, our pamphlet, Hold to Record: Voice Notes from Refugees, edited by Sarah Jackson and Olja Mladjenviç, was published by Palewell Press in April 2025. It was launched at Kensington Central Library in London. The anthology is available to purchase here, with all profits going to Compass Collective.
The authors featured in the anthology are: Naseraldeen Ahmad, Ahed Almond, Yafet Amanuel, Sule Selim Cicek, Roua Horanieh, Hamida Khoder, Tania A. Barron, Olja Mladjenoviç, Vincius Morfer, Frank Muskie Nsubuga, Solin Shaft Issa and Anan Tello.
Voice Notes Goes Live at the New Music Biennial!
Although funding for Voice Notes ended in September 2024, we were delighted to hear that our project had been selected for the New Music Biennial 2025, in partnership with PRS Foundation, Bradford City of Culture 2025, BBC Radio 3, NMC Recordings, and Southbank Centre, and supported by Arts Council England.
For this, we partnered with Another Sky Festival to develop a new iteration of the project, working with our anthology authors and the Newcastle-based multilingual creative writing group ‘World Writes’, part of New Writing North. This resulted in live performances at the Loading Bay in Bradford, Southbank Centre in London, and John Marley Centre in Newcastle. In addition to a broadcast on BBC Radio 3’s New Music Show, Voice Notes was released by NMC Recordings in August 2025 and is available below.
Voice Notes Team
Sarah Jackson
Writer and Project Lead
Nottingham Trent University (2023-2024)
Northumbria University (2024 – 2025)
Leah Gayer
Actor and Project Manager
Compass Collective
Hardi Kurda
Sound Artist and Composer
SPACE21
Associate Artists
The talents of those with lived experience of forced displacement are central to the design and development of Voice Notes, and we recruited a number of Associate Artists whose skills and talents shaped the direction of our activities and outputs.
Solin Shafiq Isa
Translator
Rojava
Ganna Bielcheva
Associate Digital Artist
Ukraine
Anan Tello
Associate Writer
Syria
Olja Mladjenovic
Associate Writer
Bosnia & Herzegovina
Acknowledgements
We are deeply grateful to all the partners who have supported us throughout our activities and enabled us to bring our activities to fruition: in 2023–2024 Compass Collective, Counterpoints Arts, New Art Exchange, Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature, Refugee Roots, Slemani UNESCO City of Literature, SPACE21 Festival, and STEP; in 2024–2025 Another Sky Festival, Compass Collective, Counterpoints Arts and World Writes, part of New Writing North.
Special thanks are due to sound artist Hardi Kurda and artistic director of Compass Collective Leah Gayer, who have been central to the project’s design and development since its inception. Thank you to our associate artists Ganna Bielcheva, Olja Mladjenoviç and Anan Tello, and translator Solin Shafiq Isa, without whom Voice Notes would not exist. And above all, thanks are due to the many individuals and communities who participated in our workshops or otherwise contributed to our collaborative outputs.
Voice Notes features the words and voices of: Ahed Aljondi, Aila Alsakka, Aisha, Alaa Manla, Anan Tello, Aya Muhmad Sharef, Barfin Majed Khlil, Cindy Yip, Darsin Mahmoud, Delacky Katjikuru, Elena Sophya Gryshchenko, Fawwaz Oubari, Fouad Jmo, Frank Mukisa Nsubuga, Gehan, Hamida Khoder, Hanin Shexo, Henna Asikainen, Huda, Janwar, Jose Maria Covas Lima, Jwan, Kwizera, Laoya, Leylan Oje, M. T. Abouzaid, Malva Kawa Hsan, MD Nazir Uddin, Rehab Jameel, Mona Lee, Mustafa, Mykyta, Mymona Bibi, Naseraldeen Ahmad, Noor Anwar Mhammad, Olja Mladjenović, Papi Jeovani, Raz Hadi, Roaa, Ronaz Abd, Roua Horanieh, Safia Zead Mohammad, Sara Pashtiwan Hussein, Solin Shafiq Issa, Sule Selin Cicek, Sunmaya, Tania A. Marron, Tati Kashtanova, Vian Mohammed, Vic Riveros, Vinicius Morfer, Vivy Huang, Yafet Amanuel, Yasmin, Yousef, Yuxi Hou, Zainab Mahmoud, Zegeju Bahanagess and Zekrullah Rafiee. We would also like to acknowledge the many artists and contributors who have chosen to remain anonymous. This project is created by and belongs to all those who have taken part.
We are extremely grateful to the Arts and Humanities Research Council for funding our activities during 2023–2024, and to the New Music Biennial 2025, in partnership with PRS Foundation, Bradford City of Culture 2025, BBC Radio 3, NMC Recordings, and Southbank Centre, and supported by Arts Council England, for funding our activities during 2024-2025.
For more information about Voice Notes, or to get involved, please contact Sarah Jackson.
