Echoes & Whispers was a creative evaluation I undertook for Species on the Edge: a Scotland-wide partnership of conservation organisations. I shadowed their bat conservation work in the Solway region over the summer of 2025, talking to their species officers, conservationists, wardens, volunteers and community groups that had partnered with Species on the Edge to promote ways to help bats.
I created three distinct pieces of work.
The first was a ten-thousand-word piece of nature writing, with a focus on reporting the experience of being out there, working for and with bats. I wanted to foreground the audible elements, weaving the voices of conservationists and participants into the essay through interviews to help tell the story.
The second was a podcast, produced in collaboration with the sound artist Claire Todd. My writing practice involves taking field recordings of the sounds of nature as well as recording conversations with conservationists. Instead of letting these languish on my hard drive, the collaboration with Claire helped turn them into an immersive sound journey into the experience of being there. Utilising her sound library and own music, along with my recordings of bat detectors, the sounds of the night and my narration, she weaved them into an evocative, immersive sound experience. As everyone processes information differently, this approach opens the project up to those who prefer to listen to a narrative rather than read.
The third was an artist’s book. For those who process information visually, I created this hand-bound edition, featuring handwritten extracts from the essay presented alongside images from the field work, cut-paper batwings of the featured species and spectrograms of the ultrasonic frequencies – what the bat hears – alongside spectrograms of the detector’s translation – what we hear. The aim was to make an visually striking representation of the contents of the essay, while still keeping the spirit of the narrative and its focus on sound, vision and the feeling of bat work.
Stephen Rutt 