Hannah Kemp-Welch is a sound artist with a social practice. She creates works collaboratively and in community settings, often responding to social issues. Recent projects include Nomadic Listening (2024) a series of workshops and radio installation for Manifesta15 with communities in the Barcelona Metropolitan region, and o-o-radio! (2022), a project at Wysing Arts Centre constructing homemade radios with d/Deaf young people, to better understand how hearing aids operate.
Hannah has a particular interest in transmission arts - she builds DIY radios and antennas sensitive to electromagnetic waves produced by natural phenomena. She is currently working on All Under One Magnetosphere, an experimental feature for BBC Radio 4 that listens to the Earth’s natural static. In 2020, she co-founded the feminist radio art group Shortwave Collective; together they deliver workshops, perform, broadcast and write. Recent projects include Living Radio Lab (2023) an installation for Struer Tracks biennial, Denmark, and Plural Radio-Listening (2022) a text published in the anthology Bodies of Sound: Becoming a Feminist Ear (eds. Revell & Shin, 2024).
She also works on audio docs and podcasts, recently for BBC Radio 4’s Short Cuts (2024), LUX (2023) and On The Record (2020-23). Hannah received the silver prize in the category Grassroots Podcasts from Audio UK in 2024.
Alongside her artistic practice, Hannah teaches sound arts, contextual studies, community engagement, and collaborative practice as an Associate Lecturer at Central Saint Martins and London College of Communication. She designed and delivers an elective titled ‘Cultural Democracy’ for BA Culture, Criticism and Curation, and curated the grad show for BA Sound Arts and postgrad show for MA Sound Arts in 2024.
Hannah is in the third year of an AHRC-funded PhD, also at London College of Communication, with Creative Research in Sound Arts Practice (CRiSAP), working on a project titled 'Listening in Socially-Engaged Art: Artistic Strategies for Equitable Collaboration'. This research investigates a turn towards naming specific modes of listening, and through practice-based research asks which might be useful for community-centred art practices.
Hannah has extensive experience in the arts and heritage sector, having worked in learning and engagement roles at London Metropolitan Archives (2020-21), National Gallery (2020), youth music charity Raw Material (2013-20) and Tate (2013-17).