Buongiorno, or buonasera. We hope you had an incredible summer, it’s been another rollercoaster for us, but this is life when you decide to follow your guts, follow your dreams and make the impossible actually possible.
It’s been a summer of pondering, sharing, meetings, creativity, and near-death experiences for both of us. What a journey life is, when you take the unpaved path.
Ponderings after Sierra Leone, deep stuff - by Axel.
Sierra Leone has been a tough place for the mind, 8 months spent on the road, trying to connect to people, understand their point of view of life, feeling what they feel, it’s been difficult. My great friend Charlotte Mikkelborg warned me of this, and I understand what she meant by it. I would love to help everyone who needs help, it comes naturally when you come with an empathic, respectful and humble mindset. But it’s easy to drown your energies feeling the desperation and need for help from the majority of people you meet.
Sierra Leone was when my 'patience batteries' ran out, and I didn’t know how to react to requests for help anymore. Someone told me to just let it go, but I can’t, I feel something and there is nothing to do about it. I met wonderful, respectful people.
Can I make a change? Can I help someone to have a better life, to follow their dreams? I’m a white man in his early thirties, my passport is my skin, I get venerated for doing nothing, and this is painful because I can see how people need help, real help! I’m aware of my privilege, and I’ll do my best to bring respect wherever I go.
Honestly, during May I didn’t want to go back travelling, I thought the pain would be too much, but deep down I knew I had to find a way to deal with it, a new mindset. It took a few months and talking to a few close friends to realise I’m not on this planet to save everyone, it all starts with the most simple things, not even material ones. Giving a smile back, talking to someone, helping someone who needs help on the street, a sense of community.
Someone asked me when in Outamba Kilimi NP ‘Axel, what’s your favourite thing about Africa?’, I took no time to answer, ‘community’. Yes, this is the most beautiful thing I’ve seen and experienced, people from different families and places help each other. In the West we’re segregated behind those stupid walls, scared of the neighbour stealing stuff from us, other people coming into my property. Just thinking about this stresses me out, I’m not saying community living is always perfect, but there is something we’re missing there. Oh please nope, I won’t go living in one of those communities run by a white dude who wants to save people from doom, I’m talking about common sense between people all over the world.
‘What’s the solution to this? How can I be a better person? Smiling back and giving hugs all good, is there anything else I can do?’ I asked myself. Well, you may laugh at me, but we need art and creative minds. We need to express our emotions to the world, sharing our thoughts and feelings. How will I do it? Music has been my life forever, listening to Jamiroquai and Daft Punk, singing their songs without having an absolute clue of what they were saying. Well, this is my path, and this expedition is the beginning of a new Axel, probably the most true to himself.
Global Birdfair July 2024, a growing family of inspiring people.
Our second Global Birdfair ever, and what a fair it has been! If in 2023 we showed up with some basic stuff and put together things last minute, this time I must say we killed it. We are so proud of the work we’ve done, from the stories we created to how we shared them. We engaged with so many people, from visitors to other stalls to chairs of NGOs and business owners, and we showed our potential as storytellers.
Our stand at the Global Birdfair.
Ario and Axel at work.
Thank you Penny and Tim for believing in us, and the wonderful Limosa Holidays for sponsoring our stand, we’re so grateful for your support!
We were so busy during those days, and on Friday we created something truly special, part of our vision coming through, bringing the voices of the conservationists we met and worked together to the Global Birdfair. As pretty much all our collaborators are Birdlife International partners, Sarah Brady, Head of Campaign Strategy & Communications at BirdLife International, has asked us to help them figure out a way to celebrate and elect the Global Birdfair Flyway Mascot 2024, the most incredible migratory bird story for this year! Who better than our collaborators, and other Birdlife partners around the world, would know who should be the best candidate to become the mascot? Well, the partners decided on the candidates from a list of birds the Birdlife specialists chose, we then presented the candidates to the Global Birdfair audience on Friday afternoon, together with videos from the partners from all across the globe. We gave the options to the audience who in the end chose the official mascot of the year 2024, being the Egyptian Vulture!
Presenting on the main stage at Global Birdfair 2024
Thanks to Charlie Bingham (go pre-save her new book! The Life-Affirming Magic of Birds) to organise the podcast station, and for keeping us even busier, Charlie introduced our project to some of the wonderful hosts, meaning we ended up having a chat on the podcast stage with Jack and Roddy from How Many Geese, Suzy from The Casual Birder and Connor from Planty Planty Zoo Zoo. We love the work these creatives do to create unique podcasts all about. Thank you so much everyone for having us.
Talking to Suzy on the Swarowsky Podcasting Stage
With Connor (centre) from Planty Planty Zoo Zoo and Oscar (left) the sound guru at the stage.
With Suzy from The Casual Birder Podcast
With Roddy (left) and Jack (right) from How Many Geese, a clear height difference between the two teams, thankfully there was a step available for us minions.
The How Many Geese podcast episode with us, titled ‘Drum n Bird’ is out already on all streaming platforms!
Axel playing Shambala Festival, Alexandra Palace
and a special event announcement.
Not sure you’ve seen it but Axel has been sharing his new ‘bird beats’ on Instagram, where he samples wildlife sounds to make electronic music beats, from Lo-fi to House to Jungle. Aside from this, he’s been invited by Sam Lee to do an improvised session with his band and the Murmuration Choir at the Shambala Festival back in August 2024, taking people on a sonic journey following the Nightingale from Sierra Leone to the UK, with the choir and the band improvising on top of Axel’s live performance.
Axel (left) with the Murmuration Choir and Sam Lee's band at Shambala Festival 2024
Well, this Friday 11th of October another big event is happening, Axel will join Sam Lee for another special event, this time the Future Of Sound at Alexandra Palace (London). They will take the audience to a journey through the music inspired by the Nightingale, with Sam narrating a piece he wrote and singing, followed by Axel’s soundscapes, music, and samples from as far as Mongolia, and as way back as the early 1900s.
Tickets are still available, we will be up on stage at 7.10 pm, let us know if you come over, we have a discount code available for our friends FISNETOFF24
Also, if you're in London, make sure to leave the weekend of November 7th free. There may be a cool event we’re curating taking place. More info soon!
What’s next with Wings Across Continents? Documentaries on YouTube!
We’re working on the next phase of the expedition, which takes time in many ways, but we will update you soon. You may wonder where all the documentaries we made so far. Well, if you were wondering, you asked the right question. We’re currently working to make them into 2D versions to be published on YouTube!
We are planning to release one a month starting in November. There is one way you can truly help us, you and your friends subscribing to our YouTube channel! This helps us get a higher number of people on the platform, the YouTube algorithm to see us and you would get a notification when the videos are up.
So please click the below button, subscribe and share! It means the world at this moment.
Dangers are closer than we think.
It's funny how we drove thousands of kilometres through two continents, in places where we didn’t know the language, through deserts and tropical forests, cities at night, 7 borders, got stuck in police offices for hours various times, to then risk our lives so close to home.
Axel was driving out of his friend’s car park in East London to go recording Swifts in Oxford when the front right wheel on Yota popped off. Because he was driving at 5 mph the car stopped quite quickly, but the thought of what could have happened came in his mind quite quickly. Even at 40 mph, this could make the car twist and flip, not leaving many chances to get out of it. Gratefulness was in his mind from then, but was there a message? Why live a near-death experience in East London, after all these kilometres driven, which could have taken his life many times until then? We’re still looking for an answer to this.
Well, it didn’t finish there, a few weeks later Ario was in Trieste, driving at night at normal speed on his scooter going back home, sober having spent a chilled evening. All of a sudden a deer decided to jump on his trajectory (or was Ario on his way?). Ario hit it big time, him being thrown off and sliding on the tarmac for a good 10 meters, the scooter sliding another 50 meters down the road, and not much was left of the deer. Luckily his many years of skating and experience in falling helped him to avoid breaking any bone, but the skin is not as tough. He got some serious burns, but he did so well in the end. He's back in full mode working full time and doing all the crazy stuff he's used to.
In just under two weeks we had two accidents which could have been fatal. Do you believe in messages? Coincidences? We don’t know. What is the meaning of this? Not sure, but it’s not finished yet.
In mid-September, Yota has been fixed by a mechanic, Axel on his way to Bath to work for a day. Not even 14 kilometres after leaving the car park, on the North Circular, the same happened, but at 40 mph. The rage was real there, luckily driving experience and luck that no one was close there meant Axel managed to pull the car slowly to the side of the dual carriageway, all this while driving it at 40 mpg on three wheels and one piece of metal. Or the mechanic didn’t do the job, or something else happened to a lower ball joint, which is a common issue on this kind of Landcruiser. Either way, that was the nightmare that Axel dreamt of before, but didn’t think it could have happened. Maybe it happening in the car park prepared it to be ready for that to happen, to see if he could take a bigger challenge.
From Axel: This is what we have to do I believe, learning from the small mistakes see how these could be avoided, and imagine what would happen if these were much bigger. Solving a problem once, consciously, maybe means we can learn how to tackle bigger ones afterwards. This is just a train of thought that came to my mind while writing the previous paragraph.
Sounds Across Continents, the new 2024-2025 expedition announcement.
Poor Daphni (Axel's Hilux) has been under a couple of tarps since last April. It's time to get her back out in the field, the Sounds Across Continents 2024-2025 expedition will happen, starting the end of November 2024 until early March 2025!
As of November 2024, ‘Wings Across Continents’ will morph from an audio-visual experience into an audio-only one, with the expedition rebranded as ‘Sounds Across Continents’. The expedition will be a quest following 5x different migratory bird species, trying to find them in the thick of the African jungles, or the arid lands of the sub-Saharan Sahel.
The story of each month will be inspired by the local stories of migratory birds, their habitat and the people they encounter, together with traditional and contemporary music.
The Immersive Experience will be running all day long, with people entering the loudspeaker area, being seated and wearing blindfolds to help immerse the audience into the story without visual distractions.
The project will start in Sierra Leone, where Daphni is currently stored, to South Africa, stopping at 8-10 different countries to create the installations. The expedition will be split into two phases, November 2024 - March 2025 from Sierra Leone until Nigeria, and then October 2025 - April 2026 from Nigeria finishing in South Africa.
The main concept and creative goals remain the same as Wings Across Continents, inspiring local people and helping them create a connection with their local wildlife, which in the case of migratory birds, is the same as ours.
The excitement is high, and we can't wait to share more details about it.
Help us to spread the love for migratory birds.
Would you like to take part in the expedition by supporting us and the local nature reserves? Easy peasy, we have an online shop made just for this!
Our Interactive Postcards, Prints and Albums are available on our Ko-Fi page or Bandcamp.
By purchasing our work you support our expedition, feeding us and helping us fill up our vehicles’ tanks to reach all the migration hotspots where we bring our Immersive Experience, but not only. 10% of the profit goes back to the location where the story has been captured.
What you buy supports us and the local communities we visit, not as a one-off, but in the longer run.
If you’ve got a Print or Postcard already, check your email inbox as you should have received the password.
Much love from the brothers,
Axel & Ario
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