fill your boots

concept, recording, production HANNAH FREDSGAARD-JONES  commissioned by TINY IDEAS FESTIVAL, OXFORD, 2022

A story about how one adventurous pair of boots went walking to fill their boots with the sounds of Oxford.

Fill Your Boots is a musical sound collecting adventure for early years. Put on your favourite pair of boots and step into an engaging tapestry of sound, narration, and music. Fill Your Boots begins with an empty pair of boots and builds to a quirky musical composition as the boots go walking around the city of Oxford.

The sound adventure takes the listener past flapping bin lids, barking dogs and along cyclists dinging their bells. Excited by the fast rowers that shoots past the Boathouse, the boots dip the tips of their toes in the Thames. They collect the sound of the Carfax tower, they go looking for a cup of tea in the Covered Market and they even meet a shark that lives in the roof of a house. As the boots are nearly full and ready to head home, they get pushed over by a crowd of busy feet stepping out of a train arriving at Oxford Station. The composition of sounds starts spilling out all over the train platform. Perhaps the listener can help put them back into order? Fill Your Boots is a love story to our Oxford and the everyday sounds that make up the unique Oxford soundscape.