Field Recording Grant
Earth.fm Grants is the first field recording programme supporting people from underrepresented regions of the world to learn about and get involved in sound recording. The participants receive professional audio recording gear, extensive guiding, and covered field trip expenses. In addition, we also offer them coaching sessions with the Earth.fm team of professional field recordists. Our main intentions are to provide individuals with an opportunity to grow their interests, get involved in the protection of their local natural environments, and encourage spreading awareness about their importance.
Earth.fm, a non-profit initiative, organised and funded the entire 2023 field recording grant. In order to continue this initiative in 2024 and create future opportunities for individuals from underrepresented regions, we depend on support in the form of monetary funds or audio equipment to make the next field recording grant a reality.
Grantees of 2023
Giselle Ragoonanan [Trinidad and Tobago]
Giselle is part of the Caribe Indigenous community in Trinidad and Tobago (who call themselves the Kiari Ierette). A naturalist and field biologist with a particular interest in avifauna, throughout her life Giselle has had a burning passion for conservation and fieldwork. Her greatest joy is closeness to the lords of the air and the rainforest, blissfully surrounded by the purity of untouched nature.
She is also director of ARC Conservation – a community-led grassroots organization working to promote rainforest habitat protection in Trinidad’s Northern Range hills. Giselle is passionate about reuniting humans with nature and building rural community capacity while integrating indigenous knowledge with science.
“Field recording has been a dream of mine. To operate a field recording program means getting to delegate and teach acoustic monitoring to citizen scientists and community members [and about] the wonders of nature through soundscape. There are so many organisms we sometimes cannot see in the forest, the birds, the insects, the powwow sound of fungi, the wind traveling with messages from the trees while mycelium transports nutrients. Nature soundscapes are the dream of any naturalist. My goal with this grant award is to purchase field sound equipment as a resource for project building and community education.
👉 You can connect with Giselle on Instagram and via the ARC Conservation account. To support indigenous community-led conservation, please visit her GoFundMe page.
Martha Mutiso [Kenya]
Martha has explored her love for nature through guiding, writing, photography, filming, and sound. She’s always loved listening to nature sounds, especially birds, bats, frogs, and crickets, but when the world went quiet in 2020, she was amazed at how frequently she could hear birds in her typically not-so-quiet urban neighbourhood in Kenya – including barn owls, late at night.
“In 2021, through the Jackson Wild Mentorship Program, I was fortunate to be mentored by Ben Mirin, an acoustic biologist, science communicator, educator, artist and media producer from the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology. Through this mentorship I was able to gain an in-depth understanding of sound, recording techniques, and field recording gear. “I’ve continued to develop my bioacoustics skills by undertaking online courses with Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Wildlife Acoustics, as well as interacting with other field recordists from around the globe. I’ve also been privileged to have access to local scientists who identify my wildlife recordings, especially amphibians. In return, I continue to explore bioacoustics as an emerging tool in wildlife conservation, as well as contributing to wildlife monitoring studies.
“I’m grateful that through the Earth.fm field recording grant and training I’ll be able to record and share unique nature sounds from Kenya, as well as contribute to local wildlife conservation efforts.”
👉 You can connect with Martha on LinkedIn, Flickr, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, visit her website, and listen to her recordings on SoundCloud.
Isaac Amoasi Arkoh [Ghana]
Isaac Amoasi Arkoh [Ghana]
Isaac is a 34-year-old Ghanaian broadcast journalist and nature enthusiast, who has worked with several radio stations in the country. As a radio presenter, he developed a fascination for nature sound recordings and was lucky to travel to some of the most beautiful and intriguing places in Ghana, to make recordings and conduct interviews for the radio.
“The beautiful sounds of nature captured by my recording devices often left me in awe. Whenever I drive on the roads, I am thrilled by some of the sounds that I hear. I usually break the drive in an isolated location (Ghana has several forests and lonely roads). I kill the engine and enjoy nature, recording some of these sounds to relive the moment later. Recently, I collaborated with a German-language media company to record sounds for their radio documentary on cocoa.”
“Firstly, I would like to express my gratitude to Earth.fm for awarding me this grant. The timing couldn’t have been [more] perfect. My lifelong dream has always been to use nature sounds to tell the Ghanaian story. Ghana boast rich natural habitats and it is tragic that we cannot share these beautiful sounds with the rest of the world. The grant will enable me to do so: to share the echoes of the castles, the roar of the oceans, and the cries of the varied fauna. I want to let the world hear the birds that sing at dawn and the chaos of our market on a busy day. Thanks to this grant and the education that comes with it, I will be able to achieve my dream of becoming a [full-time] world-class natural sound recordist.”
Lynn Nadar Htoo [Myanmar]
Lynn has been living in Yangon, in Myanmar/Burma, since 2016, when she began performing as a singer-songwriter on the underground music scene.
“I began learning music production on my own, particularly during my free time, because I wanted to develop my own sound. I participated in ‘Soundscape Studies: Thinking with Sound’ workshops in 2022 and sound design classes at the Yangon Film School. I’ve worked as a sound designer and composer ever since on animation and film projects. I became interested in ambience-creation and field recording after working on film projects, and began to enjoy going out into the world to record sounds for creating different ambiences.
“The Earth.fm grant is a fantastic opportunity for me because I will learn how to record nature sounds in depth, and I am confident that I will be recording more whenever I travel. My goal with this project is to travel to natural places where few people have been, to record and preserve their sounds for others to cherish. I believe that by capturing and sharing the beauty of nature through sound, we can encourage more people to appreciate and protect our planet.”
👉 You can listen to examples of Lynn’s work on Bandcamp – https://yesnowave.bandcamp.com/album/jamadevi
Recordings Upcoming
A Bhaskar Rao [India]
A Bhaskar Rao [India]
Bhaskar is an alumnus of the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad, where he studied Film and Video Communication Design, and the National Institute of Technology (NIT), Bhopal, in Planning, Policy-making, and Development Studies. As an independent professional, he works on films, animation, installations, performances, content writing, and research projects, collaborating with people and organizations in India and abroad.
As an academic, he teaches as a visiting faculty member for Film, Sound, Music, Advertising, Space Design, and Social Design at various design, media, and technological institutions across India. In March 2022, he self-published his first book, the Hindi-Urdu poetry compilation Khayal Darzi.
“I feel this program will help me extend and expand my vision to create tools, methods, and frameworks which enable and encourage interpretation and re-imagining of the [combined] natural and human-made world that we live in.”
👉 You can listen to examples of Bhaskar’s work on Earth.fm – ‘River Parvati’ and ‘River Godavari’ – as well as further recordings on SoundCloud