Campus Life_1: our green spaces

Walton Hall Campus

As a 4 nation university we may sometimes forget that we have a central campus in Milton Keynes. Academics, technicians and administrators – the wearers of muddy boots on a building site in the early 1970s – today have the benefit of working in a green and diverse landscape covering 111 acres next to the River Ouzel in this New City. Working alongside OU staff, are a community of doctoral students beavering away on their PhD research projects; it is great to see the diversity of research underway, much of it in our School reflecting themes connecting sustainability, innovation and technology.

As we’re experiencing such wonderful spring weather at present, I am inspired to write a couple of blogs on campus life. This first one celebrates the green spaces of the campus and highlights a global sound project, live streaming this May Bank Holiday weekend.

Sounds of daybreak – a real-time stream from across the globe

The image above shows the site we will use to record the dawn chorus on Saturday May 3rd, 2025. The site is on the western edge of the campus, bordered by the River Ouzel. This will be the inaugral live stream of the Weston OpenLiving Lab. The Living Lab, launched by the OU in 2022 with support from the Garfield Weston Foundation, provides a platform for education and research into nature-based solutions, supporting public engagement with nature as part of wider responses to the nature crisis. REVEIL is a 24hr+1 live radio programme which is assembled and broadcast from Stave Hill Ecological park in London. The live streams are sounds of day break from around the world over this 24 hr period. From our OU site we hope to livestream the  dawn chorus of birds on campus …. so you might hear common woodland birds: robin, wren, tits, thrushes and warblers; and occasional water birds including little egret, grey heron and kingfisher. You can hear more about the livestream project and how to listen by following the links below. Join us if you can for an early start, or listen to a snippet of the recording which will be added to this blog later.

Thanks to sound artist, Caroline Devine, for her guidance and project support.

Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes
URL: mobile_open_lab.mp3
Streamer(s): Open University
Broadcast time (your location UTC+1):
SAT 04:49 – SAT 05:26
Broadcast time (stream location UTC+1):
SAT 04:49 – SAT 05:26 (Civil Twilight – Sunrise)
Coordinates: +52.023702°, -0.713778°

This is a sample of the dawn chorus we streamed from the Open University on 3rd May morning. It was wonderful to be on campus at that time, as the daylight slowly emerged. The birds who provided the soundtrack to the livestream include:

• Wren
• Woodpigeon
• Blackbird
• Song thrush
• Robin
• Blackcap
• Chiffchaff
• Blue tit
• Great tit

We also had a visit from a barn owl. It landed near the recording site and then flew straight towards us – we were sitting 20 or so metres away from the recording gear – closely followed by a couple of swooping bats. An amazing start to the bank holiday weekend.