Sound Travels and MassArt host Listening Launchpad
On Thursday July 24, 2025, Amanda McCluskey, Mass College of Art, and Martha Merson, PI on Sound Travels, had conversations about listening and soundscape with an estimated 50-100 kids and adults as part of Sound Travel‘s World Listening Day events. Amanda describes the experience:
This was a tabled event that took place during Thursdays on the Lawn at the Loring Greenough House in Jamaica Plain, MA on July 24th. The Listening Launchpad had a spy agency theme — as kids approached the table, the sound of the Mission Impossible Theme played quietly on a speaker. I was in character as “Agent M.”, offering kids the choice to accept a Mission.
This was the Active Listening Mission. It instructed the spy to move around the location, using their Listening Ears to locate, listen, and mark off each sound on the bingo-scavenger hunt grid. Spies were instructed to report back to the Listening Launchpad upon Mission completion to receive the official stamp of approval. Once they returned, I asked them to share their highlights like, “Which was the most interesting sound you heard on your Mission?” and “Can you recreate it?”.
Anyone who visited the table could vote in jars. The question was “How do you work best?” One jar was for working alone, and the other was for working in a group. I asked them to explain their vote, and what they could observe about the number of votes in each jar. A few kids wanted to change their vote or vote for both, so the results are not entirely accurate, though a majority answered “working alone”.
Participants worked with Martha on sound poems, drawings, and note card sound word missions. Many kids returned multiple times, asking for more tasks. The overall engagement was higher than expected, and lots of great learning for future events!