Leanne Cunningham
Her practice explores sound through place and memory, investigating how environments are experienced, narrated, and challenged.
Working across writing, field recording, and publishing, she reimagines landscapes — particularly overlooked or transitional spaces — as sites of embodied listening and layered narrative. Her work challenges dominant spatial histories by foregrounding intimate, sensory, and often marginalised perspectives.
Focussed on movement and attention, her practice treats listening as both method and medium: a way of navigating relationships between self, environment, and others.
Lived Experience
Alongside her practice, she is the founder of the independent publishing platform Lonely Stone Press, which focuses on interdisciplinary approaches to land, sound, and image.
She is currently a Lecturer in Fine Art at the University of Lancashire.
Education
- PGCE with QTS, University of Cumbria, 2020
- University of the Arts London, London College of Communication, MA Sound Art, 2015 – 2016, Distinction
- University of Central Lancashire BA (Hons) Fine Art, 2011 – 2014, First Class
Academic Appointments
- Visiting Lecturer, BA Fine Art, Liverpool John Moores University, 2024
- Associate Lecturer, BA / MA Fine Art, University of Central Lancashire, 2017-2022
- Guest speaker, Sound-Image2017, University of Greenwich, London, 2017
- Guest speaker, Women in Sound / Women on Sound, The Listening Room, Goldsmiths, University of London 2016
- Archival Assistant, London College of Communication, London Musicians Collective/CLA Copyright Archive Assistant, University of the Arts, 2016
- Guest speaker, Fractured Narratives, Sonorities Festival of Contemporary Music, Sonic Arts Research Centre, Queens University Belfast, 2015
Teaching
- University of Lancashire, Lecturer of Fine Art, 2026 - present
- University of Derby, Programme Leader BA (Hons) Creative Art & Design Practice, 2021- 2026
- Buxton & Leek College, Photography & Creative Media Lecturer, 2023 - 2026
- University of Central Lancashire, Lecturer of Fine Art, Film and Moving Image, 2022 - 2023 (sabbatical cover)
- Leek School of Art, Senior Lecturer of Fine Art, 2021 – 2023
Presentations
- Sound Installation, Women's Line Project, Silk Museum, Macclesfield, 2024
- Urban Wilderness: In the Balance Programme, Outdoor Sound Installation, Longton, 2024
- 24 Doors, Outside Arts, Sound and Illustration Installation, Staffordshire, 2023
- A New Page - Spoken Word Performance, Bolton Gate Arts, Stoke-On-Trent, 2022
- Performing the Void, Dilston Grove (CGP Gallery), London 2017
- Untie Before Form, Women in Sound / Women on Sound, Goldsmiths, University of London 2016
- Narrating the Urban Space, CRiSAP, London College of Communication, University of the Arts, 2016
- Compositional Venice, Hanover Project, UK, 2014
Selected Group Exhibitions
- RWA Annual Open, 2025
- Glasgow Gallery of Photography, 2023
- Knotted Identities, Bolton Gate Arts, Stoke-On-Trent, 2022
- Until We Travel, Cities and Memory, 2020
- Daily Concerns, Dilston Grove (CGP Gallery), London 2019
- Trumpets for Viola, Rounded Radio, London, 2017
- The Listening Booth, George Gallery, London 2016
Features / Awards / Commissions
- Bureau of Listening, Denmark, 2025
- Staffordshire Ale Trail Illustrations, Staffordshire Moorlands District Council, CAMRA, 2024
- 24 Doors, Outside Project, 2023
- Dawn Chorus, Keele University / Urban Wilderness, 2023
- Word Power, Library X, London, 2018
- Rounded-Radio, London 2017
- The Next Station, Cities & Memories, London 2016
- Female: Pressure, 2016
- Dirty Ear Forum, PEER Gallery, London 2016
- Resonance FM, The Sound of Criticism; There is Nobody Special, Radio Broadcast, London, 2016