Sound, art and ecology project commissioned for the second Stockport Creative Campus installation

As part of her new commission for Stockport produced by FutureEverything, Maya Chowdhry will create ‘Decolonial Cleaning’, a collaborative art project exploring the town’s landscape through a workshop programme and public installation.

‘Decolonial Cleaning’ is a sound, art and ecology project by interdisciplinary artist Maya Chowdhry, inviting Stockport communities to reimagine ecological restoration through a decolonial lens. Taking the former Millgate Power Station site as both subject and metaphor, the project explores hidden histories, environmental injustice, and the relationships between humans and more-than-human life.

‘Decolonial Cleaning’ builds on the work of Françoise Vergès, who uses the term to critically examine how traditional clean-up schemes are shaped by capitalist, colonial, and patriarchal systems, often placing privilege and profit over community and environmental wellbeing. ‘Decolonial Cleaning’ will take Vergès’ concept further: rather than “cleaning up” landscapes to erase their histories, the project instead asks how we might care, repair, and listen to the land with respect for its complex pasts.

‘Decolonial Cleaning’ invites community groups and residents in Stockport to build new skills in sound art, while deepening their ecological awareness through online and in-person workshops, including soundwalking, field recording, and biodata sonification – turning the biosignals of living organisms into sound. Together, they will co-create a site-specific interactive sound installation, drawing on the area’s industrial legacy, and inviting audiences to ‘activate’ the soundscapes through touch.

Maya Chowdhry is an interdisciplinary artist working with sound art and installation; utilising interactive audio and sensory input to invite audiences to respond to, and create their own journey, through her climate justice artworks. Her recent focus on biodata sonification explores shared language between humans and the more-than-human world, translating plant signals and brainwaves into sound. Maya’s work has featured in diverse settings, from gardens and galleries, to TV and national radio. Recent projects include Galvanising Change (Hulme Community Garden Centre, 2021), Soil Voicemails (Science Museum, 2020), What’s Eating Reality (Lancaster Arts, 2018) and residencies with Leeds University (2020) and Nottingham Trent University’s Critical Poetics programme (2021), where she explored inter-species care.

Through sound, storytelling and collaboration, ‘Decolonial Cleaning’ will enable Stockport residents to build new creative skills while imagining post-industrial futures rooted in care and ecological justice.

The workshops will take place across various locations in Stockport during Autumn, including Stockroom, an exciting new creative and cultural hub for the town, and the former Millgate Power Station site. The resulting art installation will be presented in Stockport town centre in February – March 2026, at a venue to be confirmed.

Interdisciplinary artist, Maya Chowdhry, said:

“This is a peer-learning opportunity for us to grow together through deep listening to the site, ourselves and other beings. My hope is that these sound creation practices will allow us to produce an innovative method for decolonial cleaning in Stockport that is sustaining of the living world, and that can be replicated elsewhere to provoke a rethinking of narratives around industrialisation. My wish for the participants is that they learn new skills, enjoy the creative process and come away with a renewed sense for caring for the environment.”

Cllr Dan Oliver, Cabinet Member for Culture at Stockport Council, said:

“We’re proud to support thought provoking initiatives that bring creativity, climate awareness, and community together. It’s great that we are able to host these exciting creative opportunities for our residents and encourage people to take part and learn new creative skills as part of this fascinating project.”

Louise Fazackerley, GM Arts Spirit Project Manager, said:

“GM Arts Spirit supports innovative projects like this, that bring communities together to learn new skills, to connect to the place in which they live, and to support wellbeing. By exploring the past and re-connecting to the earth, we can envision new futures.”

Luke Oliveira-Davies, Producer at FutureEverything, said:

“FutureEverything is proud to collaborate with Maya on a project that challenges conventional narratives around restoration and regeneration, and which continues our ongoing creative output in Stockport. ‘Decolonial Cleaning’ invites us to think differently, not just about how we interact with the land but how we listen to it. Maya’s approach pushes the edges of sound and technology, opening up space for creativity rooted in care, accountability, and collaborative imagination.“