Sound pervades much of our daily lives and is one of our primary means of communication. Its ubiquity motivates a wide variety of research / from environmental noise pollution and its resulting annoyance and stress, to more positive aspects such as the design of buildings, which can improve quality of life, and medical diagnosis by ultrasound, which can help improve health. So, sound is an ideal theme for connecting people to engineering, because it can be connected to their every day experiences. Sound features in the national curriculum at key stages 1-4 and on science curricula at AS/A level, and so this allows us to reach out to school pupils. Indeed, this award is mostly focussed on 10-19 year olds. This age group is emphasised because: (i) it contains vital ages where disengagement from science and engineering occurs, and (ii) it is important to counter the dropping of science and maths for post 16-education, as these subjects must be studied if pupils are to progress to engineering careers.Sound, and especially noise, is an important issue for policy makers and features often in the media, for example bad neighbours are often cited as noisy neighbours because the noise gives something tangible to complain about; this again giving possibilities for awareness work. Society implicitly or explicitly makes trade offs between the noise annoyance generated by activities and an individual's freedom to undertake these activities. Consequently, meaningful research in many areas of acoustics requires a dialogue to be established between researchers and the general public.Acoustic engineering is concerned with the production, transmission, manipulation and reception of sound, from unwanted industrial noise to beautiful music. Acoustics embodies both the physical properties of sound waves, and the psychological and physiological reaction of humans. Given the importance of perception to acoustics, it is possible to engage the public by getting them to participate in the experimental process, for instance in mass web-experiments. Acoustics naturally cuts across traditional discipline boundaries, which opens up opportunity for public communication work. For example, the stage will link acoustic engineering to music and the arts, giving a way of engaging pupils by drawing on their interests outside engineering. This link across traditional discipline boundaries is also exploited to show that engineering can be fun and creative.The activities proposed are:1. A craft project based on making musical instruments out of vegetables2. A project where pupils work with artists to create works exploiting acoustic engineering.3. A show entitled Sound at the Extremes which will examine extreme frequency ranges (ultrasound and infrasound), extreme volume levels (very quiet and very loud), and extreme environments (deep underwater or planetary acoustics).4. A dialogue activity for 14-19 years old and their parents to enable researchers to understand their attitudes to soundscapes.5. Employing a journalist to raise the awareness of acoustics.6. Web experiments on soundscapes (and maybe also on sexy voices).

Sound pervades much of our daily lives and is one of our primary means of communication. Its ubiquity motivates a wide variety of research / from environmental noise pollution and its resulting annoyance and stress, to more positive aspects such as the design of buildings, which can improve quality of life, and medical diagnosis by ultrasound, which can help improve health. So, sound is an ideal theme for connecting people to engineering, because it can be connected to their every day experiences. Sound features in the national curriculum at key stages 1-4 and on science curricula at AS/A level, and so this allows us to reach out to school pupils. Indeed, this award is mostly focussed on 10-19 year olds. This age group is emphasised because: (i) it contains vital ages where disengagement from science and engineering occurs, and (ii) it is important to counter the dropping of science and maths for post 16-education, as these subjects must be studied if pupils are to progress to engineering careers.Sound, and especially noise, is an important issue for policy makers and features often in the media, for example bad neighbours are often cited as noisy neighbours because the noise gives something tangible to complain about; this again giving possibilities for awareness work. Society implicitly or explicitly makes trade offs between the noise annoyance generated by activities and an individual's freedom to undertake these activities. Consequently, meaningful research in many areas of acoustics requires a dialogue to be established between researchers and the general public.Acoustic engineering is concerned with the production, transmission, manipulation and reception of sound, from unwanted industrial noise to beautiful music. Acoustics embodies both the physical properties of sound waves, and the psychological and physiological reaction of humans. Given the importance of perception to acoustics, it is possible to engage the public by getting them to participate in the experimental process, for instance in mass web-experiments. Acoustics naturally cuts across traditional discipline boundaries, which opens up opportunity for public communication work. For example, the stage will link acoustic engineering to music and the arts, giving a way of engaging pupils by drawing on their interests outside engineering. This link across traditional discipline boundaries is also exploited to show that engineering can be fun and creative.The activities proposed are:1. A craft project based on making musical instruments out of vegetables2. A project where pupils work with artists to create works exploiting acoustic engineering.3. A show entitled Sound at the Extremes which will examine extreme frequency ranges (ultrasound and infrasound), extreme volume levels (very quiet and very loud), and extreme environments (deep underwater or planetary acoustics).4. A dialogue activity for 14-19 years old and their parents to enable researchers to understand their attitudes to soundscapes.5. Employing a journalist to raise the awareness of acoustics.6. Web experiments on soundscapes (and maybe also on sexy voices).

The acoustics industry contributes £4.6 billion to the UK's economy annually, employing more than 16,000 people, each generating over £65,000 in gross value added across over 750 companies nationwide. The productivity of acoustics industry is similar to that of other enabling technologies, for example the UK photonics industry (£62k per employee in 2014). Innovation through research in acoustics is a key to its industry success. The UK's acoustics industry and research feeds into many major global markets, including the $10 billion market for sound insulation materials in construction, $7.6 billion ultrasound equipment market and $31 billion market for voice recognition. This is before the vital role of acoustics in automotive, aerospace, marine and defence is taken into consideration, or that of the major UK industries that leverage acoustics expertise, or the indirect environmental and societal value of acoustics is considered. All the four Grand Challenges identified in the 2017 UK Industrial Strategy require acoustics innovation. The Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF, https://www.ukri.org/innovation/industrial-strategychallenge-fund/) focuses on areas all of which need support from acoustics as an enabling technology. The future of acoustics research in the UK depends on its ability to contribute to the Four Grand Challenges. Numerous examples are emerging to demonstrate the central role of acoustics in addressing the four Grand Challenges and particularly through more focused research. The acoustics-related research base in the UK is internationally competitive, but it is important to continue to link this research directly to the four Grand Challenges. In this process, the role of UK Acoustics Network (UKAN) is very important. The Network unites over 870 members organised in 15 Special Interest Groups (www.acoustics.ac.uk) who represent industry, academia and various non-academic organisations which success relies on the quality of acoustics related research in the UK. UKAN was funded by the EPSRC as a standard Network grant with the explicit aim of pulling together the formerly disparate and disjoint acoustics community in the UK, across both industry and academia. UKAN has been remarkably successful. Its success is manifested in the large number of its members, numerous network events it has run since its inception in November 2017 and contribution it has made to the acoustics research community. Unfortunately, UKAN has not been in the position to fund new, pilot adventurous or translational projects nor has it any funding support for on-going research or knowledge transfer (KT) activities. The purpose of UKAN+ is to move beyond UKAN, create strategic connections between acoustics challenges and the Grand Challenges and to tackle these challenges through pilot studies leading in turn to full-scale grant proposals and systematic research and KT projects involving a wider acoustics community. There is a great opportunity for the future of the UK's acoustics related research to move on beyond this point, build upon the assembled critical mass and explore the trans-disciplinary work initiated by UKAN. Therefore, this proposal is for UKAN+ to take this community to the next stage, connect this Network more widely in the UK and internationally to contribute through coordinated research to the solution of Grand Challenges set by the government. UKAN+ will develop a new roadmap for acoustics research in the UK related to Grand Challenges, award exploratory (pilot) cross-disciplinary research projects to the wider community to support adventure research and knowledge transfer activities agreed in the roadmap and support the development of develop full-scale bids to the government research funding bodies which are aligned with the Grand Challenges. UKAN+ will also set up a National Centre or Coordination of Acoustics Research, achieve full sustainability and support best Equality, Diversity and Inclusion practices.