Join in // Share skills // Work with us
Get Involved
Join us at an event
Come to a YSWN event and meet other women, girls and non-binary people who share your interest in sound and music technology.
Whether you’re a complete beginner or already doing your own thing, all are welcome. At our workshops, you can try out an activity and learn new skills – from making beats with live coding to making your own electronic instrument. Meanwhile, our socials are informal meetups where you can chat, share tips and have new ideas in a friendly, encouraging setting.
Many events are free or involve only a small charge to cover the cost of materials. So why not find out what’s happening?
Share your skills
We value and promote mentoring and knowledge sharing. Do you have an idea for a workshop that you could deliver to YSWN members?
Workshops so far have included soldering noise instruments and contact mics; live coding using ixi lang and TidalCycles; sound design in Ableton Live and much more.
Or you might like to offer a talk about your artistic practice or a technical skill that you use, informal session or space to explore an idea, host improvisations, instrument making or something else…
Become a YSWN Associate
YSWN commissions freelance work from artists, artist leader educators, administrators, project managers, consultants and others in roles that are essential for longer term sustainable work.
If you would like to be in our pool of paid associates please read our Call for Paid Associates (Word version / PDF version) and Skills & Diversity Audit and send in your application. We’d love to hear from you. We are really keen to hear from people of underrepresented ethnicities and people with disabilities. It is not a guarantee of work as roles depend on funding success, fundraising and the size of the pool.
You can view profiles of our current Associates to see what kinds of skills they offer here. If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact us.
Amy Beeston
Amy Beeston is a sound artist whose work encourages others to listen more deeply to their everyday environments. Her practice is highly interdisciplinary and often collaborative, allowing her to repurpose scientific studies in human hearing and machine listening to create ecologically-minded installations and participative sound works. Amy collaborates with Móti artist collective (Orkney) and SONA sound art collective (Sheffield), and is a co-founding member of YSWN.
Cherry Styles
Cherry Styles is an artist and zine maker based in Huddersfield. With a background in community arts and education Cherry’s skills have most recently found her working with Kirklees Libraries, Lawrence Batley Theatre and Support 2 Recovery. Committed to building inclusive and accessible spaces for creativity and connection, Cherry has led Equality and Diversity training for YSWN.
Eddie Dobson
Dr Eddie Dobson is an academic, composer and sound designer, who co-founded YSWN in 2015. Eddie has delivered summer schools and workshops for girls, women and minority gender learners, and will be a Key Tutor on the 2024 Sound and Music In the Making summer school. Eddie is a National Teaching Fellow of the HEA, and researcher specialising in education and inclusion in music technology. They’ve delivered consultation for Spotify, Music and the Deaf, ASNA, SELFA, Georgia institute of Technology and MusicHE. Eddie also delivers audio-post production services and sound design for film and television since 2019, including work for Ch4 and Audible.
Eleanor Cully Boehringer
Eleanor Cully Boehringer is a sound artist, composer and singer based in Newcastle upon Tyne. Her practice involves audio production and draws on poetry, image and documentary narratives as source material for new pieces of music. She writes and perform music, teaches one-on-one vocal lessons and runs creative workshops. She is particularly interested in making recordings of small spaces and embedding songs into rooms.
Emily Johnson
Emily Johnson (aka Emily J Electric) is an Ableton Certified Trainer, producer, musician and performer. She co-founded Equalize Music Production with Liina Turtonen, with the goal of making the audio industry more inclusive and diverse. Emily runs the Sheffield Ableton User Group and is an experienced music tutor and workshop leader, with a particular interest in helping people achieve their creative goals through confidence and mindset.
Emmy Lambert
Emmy is an audio engineer and composer focused on textural, timbral and spatial explorations in sound. She has worked in professional audio for nearly 20 years in a variety of technical roles that include live music, theatre and broadcast as well as recording and studio mixing, but she particularly enjoys working with unusual ensembles/spaces/productions and mixing live spatially. Her artistic practice incorporates acoustic and electronic instruments, field recording, collaboration and installation, and considers themes of perspective, technology, humanity and the natural world.
Helen Papaioannou
Helen Papaioannou is a composer and performer based in Leeds, whose work ranges from her solo project for electronics and baritone saxophone (Kar Pouzi), to ensemble compositions, music for moving image, and improvisation with a range of collaborators. She is also one half of the multi-instrumental duo Garlic Hug and has been a member of various other bands including Beauty Pageant and HOKKETT.
Jessica Blaise Ward
Jess Blaise Ward is a composer, musician and synth artist with a background in teaching and education. She is currently a Senior Lecturer and the Lead Songwriting Tutor at Leeds Arts University on the Popular Music Performance Course. Jess is interested in music of the 1980s alongside the development of synthesisers, and her book Making Synthwave: How an online music community invented a genre is due to be published by Routledge in 2025. Jess is a synth player and backing vocalist for 1980s pop band The State of Georgia.
Jo Morfee
Jo has been working behind the scenes in the music industry since the early 00s as an event promoter, also working for a record label in Liverpool as an office manager and booking agent. She was a Director of Liverpool Girl Geeks and Co-Founded InnovateHer in 2016, an organisation dedicated to levelling up the gender imbalance in technology careers, through educational programmes for 13-16 year olds. She is a multi-genre DJ now based in Hebden Bridge (DJ JoMo). Jo works as a freelance project manager, promoter and DJ, and is currently working on establishing a DJ school for women and minority genders.
Katie King
Katie King, a versatile musician, songwriter, and producer, is dedicated to advancing equity in the music technology industry through her founding and leadership of Women in Music & Technology. She holds a first-class degree in Music and Technology, with research focused on challenges faced by women and gender minorities in the field. Katie’s musical journey began at 15 and has taken her to festival stages including Reading, Leeds and Madcool, and studios such as Abbey Road and Maida Vale. Having worked extensively with diverse young people, she is currently forging a career in music publishing at Sentric Music.
Kelly Jayne Jones
Kelly Jayne Jones is a Manchester based artist making work that combines performance, installation and sound. Self taught, her practice includes sound installation, dance, gesture, sonic drawings, stone sculpture and film scores. She is interested in creating a multi-sensory experience that creates possible conditions for communication and exchange. Creating contemporary zones bordering quantum fictions, where communion may have the potential to explore our inner dimensions. She is currently exploring animist ideas around the breath and spirit of mountains and rivers and how we can reconnect with our planet by means of ancient and modern rituals.
Leslie Gaston-Bird
Dr Leslie Gaston-Bird CAS, MPSE is a Past President of the Audio Engineering Society. As Supervising Sound Editor and Re-Recording Mixer, she has twice been nominated for the MPSE Golden Reel award. She is a Senior Lecturer in Sound Recording & Music Production at City St George’s, University of London; and founder and director of Immersive and Inclusive Audio CIC, which provides training in Avid Pro Tools and Dolby Atmos certification for underrepresented groups. She is author of the books Women in Audio (Routledge) and Math Fundamentals for Audio (A-R Editions). She is a Pro Tools | Dolby Professional Avid Certified Instructor and Dante Level 3 Certified audio engineer.
Mia Windsor
Mia Windsor is a composer, improviser and educator based in Leeds. Mia writes pieces that involve intricately reconstructing instrumental timbres using software she has coded. She regularly runs workshops with YSWN including sessions on music production, sound recording and performance using live electronics. She also makes pipe organ drone music, writes about the creative potential of artificial intelligence in music and plays synth in the band Static Caravan.
Natalie Sharp
Natalie Sharp is a British artist, musician, and radical body activist of dual heritage. With a multidisciplinary practice spanning over 15 years, she challenges societal norms and advocates for inclusivity and accessibility within the art world and beyond. As a disabled artist herself, Natalie’s work traverses sound, vision, and costume, weaving together ambitious interactive multimedia performances that challenge perceptions and ignite conversations. Rooted in body activism, her practice embraces composed sound, electronic music, video, performance, and lighting, all underscored by a profound commitment to inclusivity and environmental consciousness. Drawing on her dual heritage, she incorporates elements of her cultural backgrounds into her art, weaving narratives of identity, heritage, and belonging.
Phoebe Pope
Phoebe is a university lecturer, specialising in music technology, songwriting, and creative live performance. Phoebe began playing the cello at the age of eight, going on to perform with multiple orchestras in Manchester before studying composition and music production at Leeds College of Music. Phoebe has since worked and collaborated on library music featured on Audio Network, worked and performed with 808 State, opened Manchester International Festival, and featured on TedTalks. Phoebe has also performed on multiple Manchester Jazz festival stages, as well as being a featured artist on the BBC Introducing stage.
Rivita Goyle
Rivita Goyle is a singer-songwriter, composer and producer. After reaching the semi-finals of the UK Songwriting Contest 2014 with her song, ‘Fly Away’. Rivita went onto study World Music at BIMM, followed by a master’s degree where she researched ethnomusicology in film scoring. Her sound blends inspiration drawn from both her roots and research, with an ability to engineer and produce across a range of genres. Rivita has been featured on many outlets, including the Rolling Stone India platform.
Ryoko Akama
Ryoko Akama works with installation, performance and composition. She sculpts daily tools and scrap wastes with simple electronic devices and invisible energy such as magnetism or gravity into kinetic contraptions, magnifying silence, time and space. Interested in non-western cultural thinking, her practice examines environment, architecture, cause and effect, sociological structure and pattern. She composes and performs a diversity of alternative scores in collaboration with other artists and musicians worldwide. She is an artistic director for ame cic and co-runs the independent publisher mumei publishing and melange edition.
Sarah Hutton
Sarah Hutton has worked in the business sector of the music industry for more than 30 years, with 21 of those years spent teaching future musicians and music technology students about the music business. Her areas of expertise are the record industry, music publishing, artist management, contracts, copyright and rights, marketing and promotion, event management and artist/band/music producer business development. She currently works as a music business consultant, trainer and mentor.
Sarah Statham
Sarah Statham is a musician, events promoter and music tutor based in Leeds, West Yorkshire. She currently writes, records, releases music and tours as Fig by Four, plays bass in Crake and provides live drums/SPD-SX for Living Body. Sarah teaches from her studio and collaborates with various educational and community music initiatives. She is part of the CHUNK DIY collective and GREAAT (Gender Rebalance Equality Action and Advisory Team).
Satnam Galsian
Satnam Galsian is a British Asian singer-songwriter and progressive folk artist based in Leeds. Her music blends Punjabi folk traditions with contemporary perspectives and feminist storytelling, exploring women’s voices, identity and heritage. She performs as a solo artist and with her cross-genre trio Kinaara, as well as collaborating with a diverse range of artists. Alongside her creative work, Satnam is Youth Progression Coordinator for Launchpad, delivering talks about careers in the music industry and creating performance opportunities for young artists. She also delivers music and wellbeing workshops in schools and community settings.
Sophie Cooper
A huge music fan, Sophie Cooper has worked in various roles as a musician, curator, educator and creative project facilitator. She has been involved with YSWN for several years, supporting education and training projects with the organisation. As part of the UK underground DIY scene she promotes regular shows in Todmorden, West Yorkshire under the name Tor Bookings and is the founder of Tor Festival.
Sophie Russell
Sophie Russell is a Leeds-based music producer, multi-instrumentalist, and artist. She primarily works with electronic music under her moniker of Cherry Seraph, but originally comes from a classical woodwind background. Her practice unpacks unconventional ways of sound creation, with an emphasis on Ableton Live capabilities. She has received and completed multiple artist residencies at respected institutions such as for Summer Studios at The Glasshouse International Centre for Music and Leeds Beckett University. She has completed work for Universal Music Group, sound installations in galleries, and audio industry panels. She is also an educator, having delivered production workshops at various institutions and festivals in the UK. Her work is currently exploring Spatial Audio live, plus A/V performances.
Supriya Nagarajan
Supriya Nagarajan is a UK based vocalist and composer who creates cross-cultural cross-genre concept-driven immersive music work. She has toured the globe and created work for festivals including hcmf//, Ultima Oslo and Iceland Symphony Orchestra. She is a PRS/Jerwood composer and an alumna of Sound And Music’s New Voices 2018. She is the Artistic Director of UK arts charity Manasamitra, and a passionate advocate for fair access in the music sector.
Become a YSWN Industry Partner
We are keen to hear from organisations who would like to support women in sound. This can be through offering financial resources, internship opportunities and/or in-kind support including equipment, software, meeting/workshop/studio space, and marketing materials.
YSWN can offer industry partners consultancy services and training on supporting women in the sound and music workforce. To discuss how your organisation could benefit from an association with YSWN, please contact Heidi Johnson, Development Manager at info@yorkshiresoundwomen.com.