❋ PROJECTS

❋ LIVE PERFORMANCE

Hayley’s live sets blend instrumentation — including clarinet, shruti, harmonium — with analogue synthesisers, field recordings, and textured samples, creating richly evocative, drone-based soundscapes that unfold through slow, shifting compositions. She performs in both stereo and multi-channel/ambisonic contexts, often integrating visuals within her live work.

Her work has been presented across venues and festivals in the UK, including IKLECTIK, The White Hotel, SOUP, and BBC Radio 3’s Northern Drift.

❋ SOUNDING WATER

An unfolding durational gathering of sound, image, and voice at PINK in Stockport (17–19 October 2025), created in collaboration by Fiona Brehony, Aisling Davis, Lizzie King, and Hayley Suviste. Sounding Water explores how we might engage with the agency of water to surface and liberate the layered histories of the places we inhabit.

We have released Sounding Water as a publication with digital audio download, including a binaural mix of the live performance. Featuring four ten page books in a soft wrap cover, this handmade book shows field work documentation from each of out four artistic practices.

Availible to purchase via Bandcamp.

❋ FROM THE RIVERS MOUTH

From the River’s Mouth (2025) is an audio-visual installation created during an artist residency at the University of Salford’s Acoustics Laboratories in early 2025, in partnership with From The Other and the University of Salford Art Collection. Premiered at Sounds from the Other City 2025, the work explores the River Irwell through spatialised sound, moving image, and field recordings, and will join the University’s permanent art collection.

The installation was presented across three distinct rooms in the labatories, each utilising different acoustic environments and technology.

❋ FORESTRY ENGLAND: ARTIST IN RESIDENCE

I undertook an art residency with Forestry England, funded by the NWCDTP, between April and June 2025. The residency took place across three forest sites in England—Delamere Forest, Bedgebury National Pinetum and Forest, and New Forest—each offering distinct ecologies, histories, and atmospheres.

Working in collaboration with local ecologists and foresters, I explored how site-specific landscapes and environmental narratives could inform and shape my artistic practice. Through fieldwork, I developed a body of material including field recordings, photography, and video, which became the basis for a series of audio-visual works responding to each location.

Outcomes to be shared soon.

❋ EDGELAND

Commissioned by Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (2020)

As Manchester’s streets and skyline are warped by the ever-accelerating process of urban renewal, the city’s edgelands and green spaces are at risk of being swallowed by waves of property development. Not only does this raise questions about the ecology of the city, as carbon sinks are flattened and wildlife is displaced, but it speaks to broader trends pushing urban residents away from shared space, community and local identity.

This project shines a light on these spaces and the activists, academics, and local people who have taken up the daunting fight against corporate interests in the city in the name of biodiversity, urban ecology and community wellbeing. As we are faced with crises of both environment and mental health, the role of public green spaces has become ever more crucial in the eyes of those who enjoy, nurture, and maintain them.

As the tide of urban growth edges closer to the open boundaries of our shared spaces, the trees, wildlife and insects continue their gentle movement, unaware that these spaces are likely reaching the end of their rich lineage. If nothing else, this project documents these final days.

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❋ NAVVIES

Navvies (2022) recognises the role of the 17,000 navvies who dug the Manchester Ship Canal. From their labour flowed the city of Salford, Greater Manchester’s industrial success, and eventually: Salford Quays and Media City itself. The Navvies Union estimates that up to 1,100 of these navvies died digging the Canal, with more injured. These men migrated from all areas of the UK, alongside thousands from Ireland, who, in particular, faced extreme prejudice.

The composition weaves together the voices of the Salford Loaves and Fishes community group, who share their insights into the navvies' experiences and reflections on their present-day lives in Salford. These personal accounts are combined with field recordings and music performed by the BBC Philharmonic.

This project was commissioned by Mediale and premiered at Lightwaves Festival 2022 in Media City. The composition accompanied visuals by Matthew Rossier, which saw dozens of anonymous individuals endlessly digging under the water, being projected into the Manchester Ship Canal – only their white spades and barrows moving.

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❋ THE PIGEONS FROM MY WINDOW

A live performance originally created for a gig at PINK in Stockport, as part of Handbook In Motion, accompanied by visuals of the pigeons that live on my street. Adapted for the MANTIS 55-speaker system with ambisonic sound.

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❋ Lōka

Lōka (2020) explores the migration of Bengali workers from rural Bangladesh and India to the UK’s textile mills in the 1950s. Blending folk songs, field recordings, archival material and oral histories, the 8-channel composition traces journeys from rural labour to industrial life in Lancashire—highlighting shared experiences of displacement, community, and working conditions across cultures.

With thanks to: Anindita Ghosh (historical narrative), Masih Alam & the Krishno Chura ensemble (Bengali folk music and instruments), Les Cartes Postales Sonores (archival Bangladeshi field recordings), Jennifer Reid (Lancashire folk songs, clog dancing and narrative), Manchester Central Library Sound Archive (‘Sounds of the Lancashire Textile Industry’) and Quarry Bank Mill for allowing me to record their machinery.

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© Shirley Baker Estate Courtesy of Mary Evans Picture Library

❋ In Those Days / Community

In Those Days / Community (2020) is a homage to Britain’s urban landscapes, human resilience, poverty and childhood inspired by the pioneering female street photographer Shirley Baker. The photograph’s I have chosen to take inspiration from are Baker’s depictions of the urban clearance programmes of Hulme, Manchester, between 1961 – 1981. Despite being based on local memories, this piece testifies to the poverty and resilience of all communities that have been under siege due to changing cityscapes.

"Whole streets were disappearing and I hoped to capture some trace of the everyday life of people who lived there" - Baker

This work is made up from sound recordings inspired by the activities and objects that are taking place in Baker's photographs, field recordings from Hulme today, and archived recordings from the British Library of Shirley Baker and other Hulme residents in interview.

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❋ Way Down to Pomona

Way Down to Pomona (2019) is a GPS-triggered sound work reimagining the history of Pomona Island through field recordings, electroacoustic composition, oral histories and archival material. Experienced via the Echoes app, the piece unfolds as listeners move through the site—tracing its transformation from 19th-century leisure gardens to industrial dockland, and now a fragile urban oasis facing redevelopment.

EXPLORE ON ECHOES

❋ Early Experiments in Recording, Vol.1 (1976-2021)

My piece Degung from 2016, the first piece of electroacoustic music I ever made, features on the Early Experiments in Recording, Vol.1 (1976-2021) compliation by Otis Jordan for Hood Faire Records. It’s a celebratory collection of early recordings by experimental artists from across the UK and Europe.

Limited to 200 copies on vinyl, these 21 tracks were recorded between 1976 and 2021, using DIY home recording equipment from dictaphones to early laptop microphones. Almost all of these now-celebrated musicians were teenagers at the time.

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❋ Making Manchester

Commission from Olympias Music Foundation

Making Manchester (2020) is a multimedia performance exploring personal stories of migration to the UK. Built from recordings of 60 pupils sharing their family histories, the work traces journeys of home, travel, arrival and belonging—highlighting how migration shapes Manchester’s social and cultural identity. Performed at NIAMOS Radical Arts Centre & the RNCM.

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❋ Hayley Suviste & Lili Holland-Fricke

Our collaboration involves creating dark and swirling soundscapes, constructed from processed cello, clarinet, guitar, electronics, and vocals. In 2023, we were selected to participate in the Summer Studios Residency at The Glasshouse International Centre for Music in Gateshead. During this residency, we focused on refining our music and live set, which we performed in Sage Two. Additionally, we received an invitation to a residency at The University of Hull, where we further developed one of our compositions, 'Womb,' for real-time ambisonic mixing. This piece was subsequently performed on their HEARO system during a concert, and also at the MANTIS Festival in Manchester in October 2023

❋ Sound Pioneers Residency

I was selected to participate in Yorkshire Sound Women Network's Sound Pioneers Residency (2022): to create an original multi-channel audio work in the University of Hull’s ambisonic studio.

The result of the residency was 'Murmurs', an ambisonic sound work which combines digital soundscapes with analogue synthesis, live instrumentation and processed field recordings, the piece explores the interplay between synthetic and organic sonic textures in spatial sound.