BBC tests health gains of hearing nature virtually

THE BBC is to test whether nature sounds can bring the benefits of the real thing, as academics study the impact of virtual experiences.

The project, with the University of Exeter, will look at the emotional effects of nature compositions created by sound recordist Chris Watson, who has worked on David Attenborough’s series Life and Frozen Planet, and film composer Nainita Desai.

Alex Smalley, who is leading the experiment, said it was a way to help people in care homes or long-term hospital care experience the positive health effects of being in a natural environment.

“At the moment the standard model of care, for both older people and for people recovering in hospital, is a TV. We could and should be doing a lot better than that.

“Nature’s to some extent an easy go-to because we know it has these therapeutic effects ... yet we don’t see that operationalised in other settings,” he said.

Mr Watson recorded the dawn chorus in his favourite oak woodland in Northumberland, which will be combined with images to record people’s moods.

Participants will be shown a short clip before being asked how it affected their emotions, including calmness, awe and anxiety.

While Covid-19 lockdowns have denied many access to nature and green spaces, city-dwellers have reported hearing birds more due to reduced noise pollution.

Mr Watson said more people were understanding the benefits of the sounds of nature because of lower traffic noise in the past year.

“That sense of wildness is in effect coming to urban environments, and people naturally soak it up and feel better for it,” he said.

The experiment is alongside a relaunch of the BBC’S digital sound-effects archive, which includes the earliest nature recording, of a shama bird singing, made by sound recordist Ludwig Koch in 1889, when he was eight.

BBC Music’s Rebecca Sandiford said: “This area hasn’t really been explored before, looking at that digital impact of music and nature, and we’re hoping that that will really have a legacy for the future, so that it will inform all sorts of programming.

“Producers always use music, they use nature sounds, but without any real sort of evidence of the way they work together.”