“Any disconnection between the ways we think 
about doing, and the ways in which we actually 
do, limits our abilities to imagine, understand 
practice, and embrace the full creative possibilities 
available to us” (Knight-Hill & Margetson 2024: 216). 

Creativity is complex, messy, rich, convoluted and diverse. 
But rather than seeing this complexity as a negative, we should 
recognise this as the core affordance and strength of its power. 

Sometimes conversations about sound and music practice can tend 
towards the technical or prescriptive as we seek to apply structured 
forms of analytical analysis to objectively analyse them in grossly 
simplified ways. But this oversimplification obscures the full 
potential subjective and the intangible. In our research on ‘Art of 
Sound: Creativity in Film Sound and Electroacoustic Music’ we 
identified a network of emergent Principles, Approaches and 
Techniques (Knight-Hill & Margetson 2024: 28-29) shared by world 
leading Film Sound Designers and Electroacoustic Composers echoed 
across and between their practices. We set these out in a map 
of possible points of creative choice which tells the stories 
of how these practitioners respond to, negotiate 
and work with sound.

How can this map encourage and enable new 
opportunities for reflection on, and 
inspiration to drive, creative 
practice? What else 
may be missing?