I'm a Manchester-based artist and writer working between geography, documentary film, sound art, and socially engaged practice. My research-led work explores how people and places shape one another, particularly in areas where natural and built environments are in flux.

Central to my practice is an investigation of rivers as dynamic socio-material and ecological entities - living systems that embody histories of extraction, industry, regeneration, and renewal. I use hydrophones and contact microphones to capture submerged sonic worlds, revealing often-invisible ecologies beneath the surface.

My current focus is the River Irk in North Manchester, where I employ embodied and material listening practices alongside collaborative documentary filmmaking. Through sound recording, durational cyanotype fabric, and participatory film, I attend to the river's socio-material flows as they resurface through everyday life, memory, and labour. This work builds on earlier collaborative projects in South Manchester, including a multimedia piece with my grandmother Polly, who responded to displacement and rehousing by writing The Flowering - a poetry collection about finding light during immovable circumstances.

My methodology centres care-led, participatory approaches: durational listening, co-creation, and multi-sensory storytelling. Through Liquid History workshops - held in libraries and community spaces- participants engage with rivers as living archives of social and ecological memory, using sound, creative writing, archives, and natural materials to explore how water shapes landscapes, communities, and identities.

Working across film, sound, performance, and natural printing processes, my practice privileges slow, attentive work that resists the urgent pace of urban development. I seek to hold space for multiple voices - human and more-than-human - nurturing creative reflection and dialogue on memory, care, and environmental change.

Education & Awards

  • AHRC PhD Candidate, Geography (2023-Present)

  • Royal Geographical Society Postgraduate Grant

  • Arts Council England (DYCP) Liquid History

For queries:

fionasineadbrehony@gmail.com