Charity Lilian Faithfull Care is working with the University of Gloucestershire to explore whether the sounds of nature can have a positive impact on the mental health and wellbeing of people in care homes.

The project, which has been awarded a grant worth £336,578 by UK Research and Innovation and the Medical Research Council,  is called SAGE — Sound, Environment and Ageing: Bringing the Outside into Care Homes. A multi-disciplinary team of researchers will develop and test an intervention using immersive audio technologies in partnership with older people and care homes residents.

Lilian Faithfull Care and nature charity the Forest of Avon Trust will collaborate with older people to record nature-based soundtracks, such as waterfalls, birdsong, and sea waves. Care home residents will listen to these soundtracks using state-of-the-art immersive technology, enabling researchers to analyse pre- and post-listening data and assess the benefits of “green” acoustics to mental health and wellbeing.

Professor Abigail Gardner, who is leading the two-year study, said the project’s findings could be used to scale up the use of therapeutic tools that employ natural sounds for improving mental health and wellbeing in older people.

“The project’s motto is ’Bringing the outside in’,” she said. “It uses immersive audio technology to expand the sonic world for care home residents whose daily environment, routines and health conditions often mean they have little access to natural sound.”