Built by Sound
Loading Bay, Bradford
What happens when a city’s stories are felt — not just heard.
Co-produced by - Dialled In, No Ghost Studios, Bradford 2025
Written by - Nikesh Shukla
Directed by - Shehani Fernando
Narrated by - Anita Rani
Original Music - Provhat Rahman
Production Design - Shankho Chaudhuri
Spatial Sound Design - Oliver Kadel
Funded by - BFI, BRADFORD UK City of Culture 2025
Memory moves to a beat.
Built by Sound is an immersive mixed reality experience that places audiences inside the stories of British South Asian communities in the 1970s and ’80s — a time when resistance was soundtracked by dhol drums in parish halls, pirate radio buzzing through walls, and the defiant joy of a generation carving out space in a country that wasn’t always willing to make room. Co-produced by Dialled In and No Ghost Studios with Bradford 2025 as part of the UK City of Culture programme, the installation weaves archival footage, personal testimonies and spatialised sound into a multiplayer MR experience unlike anything that’s come before it. Scripted by Nikesh Shukla, directed by Shehani Fernando and narrated by Anita Rani, it transforms the Loading Bay into a space where the past doesn’t sit behind glass — it surrounds you, breathes with you, pulses beneath your feet.
Blending the physical and digital.
This wasn’t a headset experience sealed off from the world. Built by Sound blurred the boundaries between physical installation and digital immersion — spatial sound design by Oliver Kadel filling the room, original music by Provhat Rahman threading through the narrative, lighting and set design by Shankho Chaudhuri anchoring the experience in the tangible. Audiences moved through the space together, sharing the experience in real time. An experiential documentary built to be collective, not solitary. The technology was pioneering — multiplayer mixed reality at this scale, with this level of integration between physical and digital elements, had never been attempted. But the technology was always in service of the story. Every design decision pointed back to the same question: how do you make people feel what it was like to be in those rooms, hearing those sounds, for the first time?
For anyone who’s ever felt unheard.
Built by Sound represents Dialled In’s most ambitious leap beyond the dancefloor — proof that the stories at the heart of South Asian music culture don’t just belong on stages and sound systems, but in entirely new formats that honour their weight and complexity. A story of resistance through rhythm. A tribute to collective memory as a force against erasure. For anyone who’s ever felt unheard — and turned the volume up anyway.
