XMTR AUDIO ARTS FESTIVAL is back in the lovely seaside town of St Leonards-on-Sea – Friday 26th, Saturday 27th, Sunday 28th September 2025 – alongside the sound art focused festival Sono-Electro.

This year is set to be even more ambitious, spanning multiple unique and wonderful venues in and around St Leonards-on-Sea. Deep diving into the craft of creative audio and sonic storytelling in its many forms: from powerful and provocative performances, to focused listening and immersive experiences.

Above all XMTR Festival is a gathering of the creative audio community to inspire, connect and collaborate.

Come and join us!

FRIDAY 26TH SEPTEMBER

SATURDAY 27TH SEPTEMBER

SUNDAY 28TH SEPTEMBER

ARTISTS & PARTICIPANTS 2025

SARAH KATE KRAMER

FUNDERS & PARTERS

ABOUT XMTR AUDIO ARTS FESTIVAL

Listen back to our XMTR Radio Hour where we unpack Sono-Electro and XMTR Festival 2024.

We’re super excited for XMTR AUDIO ARTS FESTIVAL 2025! Bringing communities around sound together again in St Leonards-on-Sea. Join us for a 3 day immersion into sound and creative audio practices.

If you have any questions just hit <<get in touch>> below.

Photos in this reel by: Rachel Manns / Georgina Cook / Eleanor McDowall / Will Gore + Esme Curtis / Hayley Clarke / Jesse Lou Lawson / Lucia Scazzocchio / Hannah Kemp-Welch

Take a look at what happened at the XMTR AUDIO ARTS FESTIVAL 2024

“XTMR was a fantastic little festival that packed a big punch. It's a sorely needed gathering for audio makers working in an ever-more fragmentary environment.”
“This is one of the most exciting and necessary events to emerge in the audio landscape this year. To be in a place that is all about the creative and not at all market focused is not just nice, but essential if we are to protect the creative health of the audio industry's producer class. It charged my creative batteries, connected me to other producers and I left glowing. In fact, the afterglow is profound!”

”This was one of the most creative and welcoming festivals I've been to for audiophiles! It's so rare to find a space to geek out on oral storytelling and sound in all its varied mediums, but I certainly found my people. I'll definitely be coming back next year!”

”This festival brings the heart and creative connections back into the sonic space. Bringing together artists from a wide range of genres and disciplines, the common thread is the joy of using sound to tell stories; to gather; to connect. Honestly made me want to drop everything and return full time to working on sound art.”

Over the past decade, Social Broadcasts has been combining community led co-creation, participatory art practice and radio making, to produce place-based audio projects all across the UK. In 2021, sonic storytelling platform XMTR.FM was launched with the ambition to showcase work from both emerging and seasoned independent audio makers from across the globe.

XMTR AUDIO ARTS FESTIVAL combines these two concepts to imagine an audio festival that champions local stories and artists, as well as showcasing audio works from around the world. Established in 2024, we’re delighted to be back for a second year of the festival.

Join us 26th-28th September 2025, for 3 days of sound installations, performances, listening events, workshops and sound walks, to celebrate creative audio at venues and spaces in and around St-Leonards-on-Sea.

We’ll be joining forces once again with Sono-Electro sound arts festival, taking place 16th-28th September at Electro Studios.

Why St-Leonards-on-Sea?
This seaside area in Hastings has been a popular destination since the 1850s, when the railways arrived from London, Brighton and the Southeast. Today, the town has a thriving artist community and a plethora of historical buildings, intimate spaces and artist-led venues, making it an ideal place for a roving festival.

Why an audio festival?
As the audio and radio making space becomes more digital, in-person, creative and collaborative experiences are ever more important. There are plenty of ‘podcast’ festivals focused on the business of podcasting and the nuts and bolts of audio production, but there’s been very little celebration of the creativity of audio making and radio arts in the UK. Inspired by legendary festivals such as the LUCIA Festival in Florence, Radio Revolten in Halle, Germany (2016), and Hearsay in Ireland (2014-2019). We felt it was time there was somewhere for the ever-growing community of creative audio makers (podcast producers, sound artists, radio makers) to gather, collaborate and be inspired. For both already initiated and new audiences, to experience the richness and diversity of creative audio storytelling.

Local frequencies
Part of the ethos of this festival is that it’s not top down, but instead deeply embedded in the area and the local community. The aim is to create works featuring historical and contemporary local stories, collaborate with local artists and venues, and co-ordinate audio making workshops for already embedded groups to produce ‘locally sourced’ work to be featured at the festival. This community-led, place-based work lays the foundations for the festival, making it a celebration of place through sonic storytelling.