Bird Bath
Created by meditator and broadcaster Alistair Appleton (Mindsprings) and musician and ecoacoustician Alice Eldridge (University of Sussex), Bird Bath transforms beautiful buildings into restorative spaces by inviting you to pause, rest and ‘bathe’ in the sound of local birdsong.
Bird Bath is a Sussex Digital Humanities Lab, Experimental Ecologies project, working in partnership with the Living Coast UNESCO Biosphere, produced by Sound UK and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council Impact Acceleration Account. Thanks to Churches Conservation Trust.
The project is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council Impact Acceleration Account and School of Media Arts and Humanities. Last year, the project held a series of events as part of the Festival of Ideas in the 2025 Brighton Festival:
Bird Bath Installation
Bird Bath transforms beautiful buildings into restorative spaces by inviting you to pause, rest and ‘bathe’ in the sound of local birdsong.
Throughout the first week of the Festival of Ideas, as part of the Brighton Festiva (Sunday 5 May - Sunday 12 May 2024), Bird Bath filled St Peter’s Church in Preston Park with spring bird songs recorded in local nature reserves and recovery sites. Find more details on the Brighton Festival website.
Bird Bath Dawn Chorus Breakfast
The project celebrated International Dawn Chorus Day with a special event, inviting participants to wake up to listen to the dawn chorus, followed by an ecosocial breakfast at St Peter’s Church, hosted by Hospitable Environment.
This event took place in St Peter's Church, Preston Park on Sunday 5 May 2024, from 5am-7am.
Tickets were Pay What You Decide, with £10 as the recommended price.
Find out more on the Brighton Festival website.
Bird Bath Dusk Meditation, Performance and Improvisation
There was a special evening of meditation, performance and improvisation. The evening opened with a guided meditation with Alistair Appleton leading a simple listening meditation within the sound installation. Trained mainly in the Buddhist tradition, Alistair draws from Thai Forest, Shamanic and Vajrayana traditions and practices to bring the basic practice and benefits of meditation, or mindfulness, to people across all walks of life. This was followed by a short acoustic performance by Alice Eldridge’s all-female multi-instrumentalist chamber music collective Collectress before the public was invited to join an improvisation with the band - and the birds - using their own acoustic instruments or voice.
This event took place in St Peter's Church, Preston Park on Sunday 12 May 2024, between 7.30pm-9.30pm. Tickets were Pay What You Decide, with a recommended price of £10. Find more details on the Brighton Festival website.