A spoken word audio journey around the Seven Sisters and Sussex Heritage Coast
We Hear You Now is a spoken word audio journey embedded in the landscape and online. It presents new stories, poetry and myths by Sussex-based writers of global majority heritage.
The series explores the history, biodiversity and topography of the area, through the lens of climate change, personal migration, legacies of empire and the writer’s own personal sense of belonging and connection to the land.
The audio journey can be experienced while walking the Sussex Heritage Coast, through 14 listening points, with each audio work embedded in QR codes and NFC tags found on small signs attached to benches and signposts, situated across six miles of the shifting, iconic chalk landscape of Seven Sisters Country Park and the Sussex Heritage Coast, from Seaford to Eastbourne and around the Cuckmere Valley.
We Hear You Now was devised, led and curated by artist, writer, performer and cultural activist Alinah Azadeh, who was Seven Sisters writer-in-residence between 2020 and 2023, and includes work by Georgina Aboud, Jenny Arach, Razia Aziz, Joyoti Grech Cato, Oluwafemi Hughes, Dulani Kulasinghe, Georgina Parke and Akila Richards, with additional work on Azadeh’s soundcloud by poets Pauline Rutter and Sheila Auguste.
We Hear You Now is a lasting legacy from Azadeh’s We See You Now (2020-22), an immersive creative writing programme for 35 creatives, inspired by the South Downs coastal landscape. The programme included a series of outdoor writing retreats, walks, targeted and public workshops and writer groups. The We Hear You Now audio series launched in 2023, framed by a public programme of live performances, workshops, talks, broadcast and digital publication.
Project Partners
This project was funded by the South Downs National Park Authority and a National Lottery Project Grant from Arts Council England.
With thanks to supporting partners Seven Sisters Country Park, National Trust, Sussex Wildlife Trust, Seaford Town Council and Eastbourne Borough Council, who have given these stories a home and the writers a welcome.
With thanks also to Writing Our Legacy, New Writing South, Writers Mosaic and Inscribe for supporting this work. Special thanks in particular to Amy Zamarripa Solis from Writing Our Legacy for support and advice throughout, and to novelist Leone Ross for the speculative fiction inspiration that runs through the series.
