Nature Ain’t A Luxury
Reconnecting people to nature through sound
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The language you're fluent in,
but forgot how to hear
“Relearning to listen to nature’s sonic language is fundamental to our health. And our health & planetary health go hand in hand.”
“Nature’s sounds are so important to us as a species that we evolved, not just to hear the information but to have an emotional response to it. That’s why music is so powerful for us.”
THE EXHIBITION
Nature Ain’t A Luxury
“An Experience Of Listening”
Barbican, London
26th - 27th Oct & 5th - 6th Dec 2025
“If you give people the chance to experience, you give them a chance to fall in love. And when they fall in love with not just the sounds but the feeling… you won’t have to convince them to protect it, they already will.”
Occurring twice due to popular demand, Louis VI’s exhibition and sound installation transformed the Barbican Conservatory into a palace of aliveness. Musician and zoologist, Louis travelled to three Indigenously stewarded locations, Sarayaku, (Amazon) Raja Ampat (West Papua) & Waitukubuli (aka Dominica), Musician & Zoologist Louis VI recorded hours of high-fidelity 360° immersive audio, capturing the shifting textures of these ecosystems at their most sonically active using microphones modelled on human hearing.
The time of visit matched the time of day you hear, offering a unique experience, transporting listeners via wireless headphones as they move through the Conservatory’s foliage.
Capturing each environment at its most vibrant, he brought these soundscapes to the Barbican Conservatory, inviting audiences to reconnect with nature while placing a vivid sense of life in the heart of London’s “concrete jungle.” Presented within a space shaped by the Victorian legacy of tropical botanical houses, once symbols of both wonder and control, the exhibition reimagines the Conservatory through sound. The work challenges colonial histories, reawakens our connection to the natural world, and encourages a deeper reflection on how humanity can rebuild its relationship with nature & beckons us back to our fluency.
“Our ancestors were Polyglots of Nature. Listening to nature’s sonic language regulates our nervous system, the sounds of a healthy biodiverse ecosystem is what we evolved with, so we’re unknowingly subjecting ourselves to an evolutionary stress in places devoid of them. Understanding nature’s many tongues was our compass, it’s no wonder we’ve lost our bearing”
A trained zoologist & sound recordist, Louis spent the last collecting field recordings in some of the most pristine places remaining on earth, indigenously stewarded and biodiverse for that very reason.
Louis VI The Zoologist
FIELD RECORDING
Kri Island
Raja Ampat, West Papua
Waitukubuli
Dominica, Caribbean
(where one half of Louis’ family are from)
Sarayaku
Sarayaku (Indigenous Kichwa Nation), Ecuadorian Amazon
“I’m using Field Recordings to both capture the sonic landscapes of the last biodiverse places on earth, preserving them for posterity but even more so as inspiring evidence for how nature could sound everywhere and a tool to reconnect those of us that live in nature depleted areas like cities, back to the natural world.”
INTERNATIONAL SPEAKING
Louis has given keynote speeches at COP26 Glasgow, GEI16 (Green Future Conference), British Phonographic Industry Conference, TED Countdown (NYC), United Nations HQ (NYC), UNA 80th Anniversary of the UN alongside UN Secretary General António Guterres & Prof. Brian Cox, Earthpercent, Serpentine Gallery, Barbican, Blue Earth Summit, SXSW London, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Beyond Music Festival, We Out Here Festival, Nesta, Natural History Museum & more…
about
louis vi
- louis j. butler
Musician, Zoologist and Wildlife Presenter inspires people to reconnect to nature through sound.
Louis J. Butler, aka Louis VI, is a mixed-race music artist, film composer, documentary maker, zoologist, nature activist, and founder of Nature Ain’t A Luxury.
His work cross-pollinates music and nature to encourage people to reconnect with the natural world by relearning how to listen to its sounds. He was one of the first musicians in the world to feature 'NATURE" as an official artist as part of the Sounds Right initiative with the Museum of the UN.
He recently delivered a talk at TED Countdown on how "relearning to listen to nature’s sonic language can save both biodiversity & humans alike", and took over the Barbican Conservatory in Oct & Dec 2025 with his twice sold out Exhibition, NATURE AIN'T A LUXURY, an immersive experience of listening, allowing people, particularly from the diaspora and lower economic backgrounds to be immersed in the sonics from truly biodiverse indigenously stewarded rainforests from around the world. Tackling environmental colonialism, separation sickness from nature, and giving people the opportunity to connect nature the science of their nervous system but also emotional feeling.
Louis has been Creator in Residence at the BBC Natural History Unit, is the newest Ambassador at the Wildlife Trust and spoken in key moments from COP26 to BPI, and GEI, & the UN Headquarters; using his rising influence to help underserved diasporic communities re-establish their relationship with nature in ways that speak to feeling as much as fact. He argues that the key to protecting biodiversity—and ourselves—lies in our ears, working towards a future where nature is not a luxury, but a necessity.