BOOM is OCM’s annual career and creative development scheme for artists or producers working with sound and music. We want to work with creators who are interested in making inspiring new music and sound experiences for audiences in unusual, outdoor, and public spaces – outside of concert halls or galleries. We want to help artists to develop their skills to work in new places, including digital, with a focus on making music and sound for audiences from all backgrounds.
BOOM aims to help artists and producers who are ready to make a creative leap in their career. It is open to early, and mid-career artists, as well as more established practitioners looking to make a real and exciting change in their work. BOOM is not a commissioning scheme; you may produce work during the scheme, but the primary goal is artistic development, whether this results in the production of work or not. There will be no expectation of public presentation of work at the end of the scheme. The OCM team will mentor and guide artists through the scheme, supporting a learning and development journey; they won’t be working to produce / present the work of the artists on the scheme during BOOM.
We are enormously grateful for the generous support of Sound UK to create a fifth place on this year’s BOOM. This place will be the Sound UK BOOM Fellow.
This year, one of the places on BOOM will have a data sonification focus – our Climate BOOM Fellow with CEDA.
We are delighted to introduce the BOOM artists for 2026-27:
Ayan Cilmi
Ayan Cilmi is a Somali feminist artist based in Bristol; her practice integrates textile, sound, and technology, operating at the intersection of traditional craft and digital experimentation. She is a resident of Watershed’s Pervasive Media Studio.
Her current practice involves creating Somali nomadic tapestries and finding was to explore the medium through experimental processes that bridge heritage and contemporary art.
Cilmi is also the co-founder of the Dhaqan Collective. Through the collective, she co-created The House of Weaving Songs, a domed steel structure based on an Aqal, a traditional Somali nomadic home. The installation travelled to the British Textile Biennial 2025 and Playable City in Osaka, Japan, featuring touch-responsive woven tapestries that trigger archival recordings of Somali women’s voices, song, and story.
The collective’s work has been commissioned and presented by the Arnolfini, Southbank Centre, Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the Venice Architecture Biennale, and the Weltmuseum in Vienna. In 2023, they received the WEVAA fellowship for research into black feminist material cultures and were selected for Columbia University’s Digital Dozen Breakthroughs in Digital Storytelling in 2024.
In addition to her artistic practice, Cilmi supports new and emerging artists through her work at The Island, where she guides artists through their residency scheme.
Instagram: @xashi.ayan Website: https://xashiayan.com/
Chisara Agor
Chisara makes the kind of music that asks you to shine your light on the world while interrogating the contradictions at it’s core. Radical hope mixed with punk, curiosity and philosophy. Agor’s work blends music, the visual arts and theatre to explore themes of visibility, myth, ecology, and the chaos a of contemporary society and future worlds.Half philosophy, half genre bending composition leading with a voice, lyricism and storytelling that has garnered work and achievements across theatre, film and visual arts. A practice that is inherently multidisciplinary, genre bending and theatrical Chisara’s artistry and stand out live performances have led her to a myriad of awards and opportunities. Including a George Butter Worth Composer award for music from their project Nocturnal Sun, choreography for Steve McQueen’s Blitz, mentoring from Brian Eno through Netflix’s composer programme and recognition from BBC Introducing London, The Great Escape, Jazz Cafe, The Roundhouse, Tate Britain and The National Theatre. As well as duetting with Tom Odell on the Roundhouse main stage and opening for artists such as Corinne Bailey Rae, Blackstreet, Anais Mitchel, Duran Duran and Rodrigo y Gabriela.
Website and social media links
www.chisaraagor.com
https://www.instagram.com/chisara_/
https://www.youtube.com/@ChisaraAgor
Links to sound files (SoundCloud, Spotify, Bandcamp etc)
https://chisaraagor.bandcamp.com/
https://soundcloud.com/chisara-agor
Kat Pegler
Kat Pegler is an experimental artist, composer and musician exploring sound, flow-states and connection to nature. Her practice brings together spatial sound, immersive experience and improvisation to create new ways of listening to place, ecology and the more-than-human world.
Her recent work includes Spring Brain, a spatial sound work developed through the SOUND/IMAGE Research Artist Residency Commission Award and premiered at Woolwich Works in 2026. She has received a DYCP award to develop her immersive sound practice and was a Lead Artist on the Horizon Europe-funded VOICE project, exploring neurodivergence, climate and nature connection through collective music-making and spatial sound. She is currently developing future folklore for the River Medway and is composing for a number of theatre and immersive experiences.
Website: katpegler.com
Kerbside Collective: kerbsidecollective.com
Instagram: @katkatmusic
Maya Chowdhry
Maya Chowdhry is an interdisciplinary artist channelling sonic art, interactive audio
and sensory modalities to invite audiences to respond to, and create their own
journey, through her artworks. Her practice interrogates themes such as decolonial
listening, food sovereignty and climate justice. Her current exploration transforms
fungal signals into soundwaves, and brainwaves into generative musicality – seeking
to find a shared language between human and more-than-human.
Recent artworks include: Electric Echoes – an interactive sound installation and SoundWalk, commissioned by FutureEverything, 2026 and What’s Eating Our Reality, an immersive dining experience, Fermynwoods Contemporary Art, 2026. Recent collaborative performances include: DVRK MASS II – Biokinetic Mantra for the Evocation of the Animistic Matrix, commissioned by Music and Sonic Studies Manchester, in collaboration with Chris Gladwin & Antony Hall, 2025.
Previous work includes: Stone Circle Transmission, an interactive binaural installation presented at Sound/Image Festival, 2024; Waves, a participatory sound experience, exhibited at Salford Museum and Art Gallery, 2023; and Fathoming Fungal Frequencies, a collaborative sound experience, presented at Beyond the Music Festival, 2023. In 2024 Maya was a Factory International Fellow exploring personalisation in large-scale immersive art.
Website: https://interactiveartist.org/
Instagram: @maya_chowdhry
Roxana Vilk
Roxana Vilk is a UK/Iranian singer and multi-disciplinary artist based in Bristol, with over 20 years of creative experience. Her practice is rooted in music, cultural identity and community, using collaborative performance to create connection, celebrate diversity and explore ideas of home and belonging.
As co-founder, vocalist and keyboard player with Vilk Collective, Roxana draws on her Iranian heritage and a wide musical landscape spanning Persian folk and funk, jazz and contemporary music. Her work brings together musicians, artists and communities to create new music and shared experiences.
Her recent multidisciplinary projects include Circle/دایره, an immersive live music and light collaboration with Squidsoup, combining music in Persian and English with “Songs of home” gathered from communities across the UK. Another recent and ongoing project is Lullabies, co-created with Bristol communities to celebrate the city’s 96+ languages, which is featured by the BBC and received a Here and Now Community Award.
Roxana is also a core member of Dovetail Orchestra, the UK’s first Orchestra of Sanctuary for refugee and asylum seeker musicians. She is an Expanded Performance Inclusion Fellow with Bristol & Bath Creative R+D and resident at Pervasive Media Studio, where she continues to explore immersive technology, inclusion and new possibilities for live music and performance.
Website:
www.roxanavilk.com
Social media:
https://www.instagram.com/roxanavilk/
https://www.facebook.com/roxanavilk/
Listen / sound links:
https://vilkcollective.bandcamp.com
https://soundcloud.com/vilkcollective
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGqa9C_WFo98agWf0YbXyqA
https://open.spotify.com/artist/1Pw55Rfi90ebMun8a9XOTS?si=-rLkTGdEQ-6IwWja6TzQ9Q
OCM and BOOM is supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England and is a PRS Foundation Talent Development Network Partner supported by PPL.
If you are interested in learning about BOOM and other opportunities both from OCM and partner and peers organisations that we share on their behalf, then please sign up to OCM’s Opportunities Mailing List.
OCM is a PRS Foundation Talent Network Partner supported by PPL.
Past BOOM artists/producers were:
Tej Adeleye
Corner of the Garden (Sam Dickison and Rachael Dadd)
TOBITHEFREAK
Aris Daryono
Verity Standen
Antonio Roberts
KlangHaus
Liz Hanks
Debris Stevenson
Ellie Wilson
UAH aka Usman Haque
Working Boys Club
Ardal Bicnic
Bilge Nur Yilmaz
Kevin Leomo
Rawz
Simon James
Hannah Fredsgaard
Joshua Le Gallienne
Marcus Joseph
Simone Seales & Rylan Gleave
Charlotte Marlow
Fionnuala Dorrity
Liminal Creative (Louise Cole & Carl Cole)
Calum Perrin
Emily Jones
Rie Nakajima
Nicholas O’Brien
Steve Urquhart
Breathing Space
Iain Chambers
Sarah Nicolls
Tim Hill
Mike Blow
Errollyn Wallen
Kate Halsall
Kate Romano
Sam Underwood
Kathy Hinde
Emma Smith
Eleanor Hooper
DIM Productions (Esther Tew & Harriet Wallis)
