Take care of your hearing at the "I Hear Good Sounds" festival

At least one third of Poles of all ages live in excessive noise. It negatively affects our health. It destroys the sensory cells in the inner ear that cannot renew themselves. Hearing deteriorates slowly, reducing the quality of life. Noise also has a negative effect on the nervous system, which is manifested by dizziness and headache, tinnitus, sleep disturbances, increased blood pressure, fatigue. The number of hearing impaired children is growing so quickly that specialists have started to classify hearing loss as a civilization disease

Why did the Philharmonic deal with the issue of hearing? We are interested in ensuring that our current and future listeners have the most comfortable conditions to hear the best sounds that we try to generate every day - explains Dorota Serwa, director of the Philharmonic in Szczecin. We asked ourselves: what should we do to make our listeners receive the best possible sounds of the highest quality?

This is how the social and educational campaign "I Hear Good Sounds" was born. Since 2016, the Philharmonic has been conducting micro and macro activities – workshops, meetings and educational games for children, teenagers and adults, industry conferences, events in the city space, non-standard artistic events. We also inspire you to look for unique places to escape noise, for instance, the school and city harmony zones that are created in schools throughout the region and in the city space of Szczecin.

Worth mentioning is the fact that such actions were called for by the famous composer Witold Lutosławski fifty years ago. It was then that he noticed the beginning of an era in which there would be an even compulsion to hear music. Unfortunately, his prophetic visions about living in noise, destroying the soundscape and lowering the quality of life come true before our eyes. As he rightly predicted, one day we will miss good music, and the undesirable sounds bombarding us will have an impact not only on our body, but also on our psyche. The Szczecin Philharmonic, together with many partners, decided to stop it, but after the difficult experiences of the coronavirus pandemic, it did not stop there.

This year's edition in its formula and program goes far beyond the sphere of prophylaxis and hearing hygiene only – adds Dorota Serwa. We consider good sounds more broadly, in the context of the availability of culture or inclusive culture, as well as the important role of music in the popandemic period. We also refer to the disadvantaged groups and finally to ecology.

This time, the Philharmonic invites you to a six-day festival. Its three main themes are good sounds accessible to everyone, good sounds as a form of broad support and good sounds as an element of ecology. During the conference "Eduphilharmonics – new challenges in the music therapy", we will ask for some advice from experts in various fields on how to care for our ears. At the concerts, we will work on the sensitivity of hearing. The exhibition prepared by the Polish Association of the Deaf – West Pomeranian Branch will allow you to enter the world of imagination and silence. Workshops in the Good Sounds City and visiting the Philharmonic will be an opportunity to meet people and communities who believe that caring for good sounds and good music is in fact concern for the quality of life.

Clogging your ears won't help! – warned Lutosławski. If you think he was right, the Philharmonic in Szczecin is waiting for you in June!

The festival program is available at uslysz.filharmonia.szczecin.pl

Demant is the sponsor of the I Hear Good Sounds Festival.

The partners of the Festival are pAudio, Medincus, the Association for Better Acoustics in Buildings "Comfort of Silence", Ecophon, Beaton, Public Primary School No. 1, The Polish Association of the Deaf, West Pomeranian Branch, The Polish Association for People with Intellectual Disability The Circle in Szczecin and Clochee.