Explore Tyneside with Tributaries

Tributaries is an immersive audio experience accessible via a new mobile app. It presents a location-sensitive score of original music merged with recorded voices, giving an insight into the daily reality of life, loss and love on Tyneside during the First World War. 


Using hundreds of local voices, Tributaries gives life to forgotten historical material from 100 years ago, including diaries, letters, newspapers and logbooks.



Tributaries also invites you to add your own recordings, provoking reflections on the present day and your connection to ordinary lives in 1914-18.

Tributaries is a collaboration between Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums and sound artist, Halsey Burgund.

Download the Tributaries app
for iOS and Android

Android app on Google Play

LISTEN
wander back in time...

The LISTEN feature generates an immersive audio stream that is unique to every listener and every listen.

Explore Tyneside using Tributaries’ constantly evolving score comprised of –

  • local voices giving life to forgotten historical material from 100 years ago that relates to Tyneside
  • site-specific original music
  • voices and sounds contributed by participants

The sounds and voices you hear will relate to where you are located and how long you have been listening.

Tributaries is optimised for those based in Tyneside but can still be experienced outside of the region.

SPEAK
contribute to the experience

The SPEAK feature encourages you to make your own sound recordings in response to several provocations -

  • Remember a voice in the app and continue their story.
  • Describe something you see now that could have been different 100 years ago.
  • Give a weather report for today.

Recordings are immediately geotagged and available in the LISTEN stream for listeners to discover on the site of where they were recorded.

This expanding collage of sounds connects lives and experiences spanning 100 years.