Claire Kearns: Early Career Promoter Fund
Concise Description: SoundBleed is an avant-garde Happening, combining sound art through installation and live performance.
Bio: Claire Kearns is a Bradford-based artist working with sound. She holds a BA (Hons) in Fine Art from Bradford School of Art and an MA in Sound Art from University of the Arts London. Her practice explores the intimacy of negative space, extending into sound through the use of pauses, silences, and site-responsive non-sounding objects as provocateurs for sonic interaction. Kearns worked with BCB Radio for ten years, producing and editing radio programmes and community oral history projects. With over 25 years’ experience working with sound in artistic practice, she also develops workshops that make sound art accessible to wider audiences. In 2023 she co-founded Bradford Sound Women Network (BSWN), creating regular events supporting women and marginalised gender groups working with sound. In 2025 she curated Plug It Up, a sound art festival presenting international artists alongside local and national practitioners.
SoundBleed builds on the international networks developed through BSWN and the exhibition strand of Plug It Up, bringing together performance and exhibiting sound artists within a shared live and installation context. The project explores the porous boundary between sounding and non-sounding elements, presenting experimental performance alongside sculptural and spatial sound works. The programme supports artists working at the edges of music and sound art, while creating space for intimate, scene-driven audiences where experimental practice can thrive. Alongside public events, the project contributes to Kearns’ development as a promoter working across live sound, exhibition formats, and international collaboration.