Listening as a service: fostering connection, collaboration, and growth.

Bureau for Listening offers a series of listening services. This is an attempt to share our knowledge and practice, but also a way for us to generate an income. An income on which we can build a sustainable, flexible and autonomous platform.

The prices are set according to our goal of creating a sustainable platform able to expand, investigate and challenge the notion of listening. The prices do not reflect the services true value–they are much more worth.

 

We are open to discuss a non-monetary agreement/exchange.

Listening as a service is not something systematic or repeatable. Listening is never the same. Listening transcends this approach to a possible returning service. By working with listening as a service we hope to challenge and expand the notion of a service itself.

 

Our services are adapted to the specific situation, and we look forward to talk with you about your needs and context. Contact us here.

On purchasing our services, we offer an extended right to use as a counterpart to all rights reserved for any part of the agreement, either in terms of production or the intellectual findings. What we wish to do and what we offer is of collective nature – listening is intersubjective – and all involved parties should be able to participate, benefit and further explore. By offering the right to use we hope you will help caring for the practice of listening.

Service

Description/Note

Price

Civic Listening Mediator

Provides professional listening services in cases of civic disputes, neighborhood conflicts, or public disagreements. The listener documents key emotional undercurrents and unmet needs, offering a non-judgmental report to all parties involved.

3,500 DKK per mediation session (1.5 hours, including report).

A Listener-in-Residence

A trained listener embedded in an institution, event, or creative process, providing continuous listening presence and documenting evolving narratives.

10,000 DKK per week or negotiable based on project duration.

A Listening (Art) Curator

We wish for curating to be a practice for listening. As curator we wish to function as a partner for conversation. We are not suited for all curating tasks, and work mostly with either specific themed exhibitions, or different open-ended, process-oriented and trans-aesthetic projects. Depending on your needs you might also find us interesting as a listening consultant.

Price varies to budget, nature of project and the specific needs.

Listening-Art-Guides (live/text)

We work with art as a medium for listening. We can therefor offer different guides for art which is entangled with listening. The guides activate listening as a frame and entering point for the artworks and uses the artworks as a portal to a practice of listening. We work with large and small institutions alike.

Live guides from 800 DKK per hour. Prices for other forms vary.

Listening to Lost Words

A service dedicated to recording and preserving personal stories that might otherwise disappear. Often used for elder care, family histories, or undocumented narratives.

800 DKK per hour or free for stories at risk of being lost.

Manuals for Listening (text)

Listening is a difficult practice and way-of-being. We can’t offer a universal manual for listening, but we would like to offer specific manuals for your needs which caringly will lead you towards listening. The manuals are often of conceptual or performative nature, and we regard the manual itself as an artwork.

Price varies according to need

Bureau for Listening as a Poet (live/text)

We love poetry and offer readings of existing poetry on the subject of listening or the creation of original poetry on commission.

Price varies according to time starting at 500 DKK/15 min. Price for original poetry varies according to project. Sometime, for activistic street use, we offer poetry free of charge.

Artworks for Listening (different mediums)

We offer artworks for listening on commission. These will be collectively created pieces, mostly in relation to a concrete exhibition or project. If you are interested as a private individual or in relation to an art collection, we are open to discussing further, regarding your position and interest for listening.

Price varies. In idealistically or ethically convincing projects, we are open to donate artworks.

Bureau for Listening as an Artist (live/other mediums)

We offer ourselves in the services of an artist, which differs from the service of ‘artworks for listening’. The bureau as an artist is capable of a holistic and creative service which transcends this description. If this service is requested, we ask for artistic freedom and for minimum two conversations with those hiring us prior to the project/context in question in order to uncover their ethical stance. 

Price varies according to duration of employment. We offer this service as full time work to the rate of 40.000 DKK/monthly pr. per.

Observation Report (live/text)

The Observation Report is a testimonial of time and space. A form of documentation of a given circumstance. The Observation Report is created during an observation session hosted by an experienced observer from Bureau for Listening. The Observation Report is by definition subjective, like observation itself. An observation session lasts between 45 and 90 minutes (longer sessions can be arranged). The time of an observation session is determined by the circumstances of the observed. If no natural time frame is given, we recommend a session of 75 minutes. The setting for an observation session can be anything you wish to have observed and documented. Examples are spaces (empty or occupied), workshops, classes, meetings, rehearsals, events, artistic practices, etc. A copy of the written observation report will be made available to you within 3 days of the observation session. Observation Reporting can also be taught as a workshop, please see Listening Workshop.

3000 DKK / 1 hour observation session + Observation Report

Listening Workshop (live)

We offer to facilitate a workshop or series of workshops that direct attention towards and awareness about listening as a critically and caring practice. These participation-based workshops can for example contain exercises, guides, performances and lectures.

Price varies according to duration of workshop and size of group. Prices start at 3000 DKK.

A Listening Pep-Talk (audio)

A pep talk for you to listen to whenever you need personal encouragement within the practice of listening. For private use only.

500 DKK / piece.

Facilitator / Moderator (live)

Listening as a practice facilitation or moderation is a service we offer for live events. We strive for open-ended premises and listening as an in-depth investigative practice. There is no limitation to what listening can facilitate.

Price varies according to context, preparation time and project. Prices start at 3000 DKK.

Listening Lecture (talk)

We offer to present lectures on the subject and practice of listening.

30 minutes 2000 DKK / 1 hour 3000 DKK.

Silent Mentorship Program

A mentorship structure where the mentor listens but does not provide verbal feedback, allowing mentees to process their own thoughts with an attentive presence. Sessions conclude with a short written reflection.

1,200 DKK per session (60 min, including written reflection).

A Listening Hot-Line (live/digitally)

Bureau for Listening operates a hot-line for listening for anyone to call. We would like to offer an anonymous and safe digital space, where we listen; callers may speak freely without interruption or response or they may listen themself; to sound art, encouragements, to nothing, or simply each other’s listening.

Price depending on context. Collaborations with festivals or other larger projects are possible, please contact us for further assesment.

Can also be hired for private use (500 DKK per 30-minute call) or free for those in emotional distress.

The Bureau for Listening Library

A service that collects and curates audio recordings of different listening practices, making them available for research, artistic use, or personal reflection. Users can access recordings or contribute their own.

500 DKK annual individual membership, 2000 DKK annual institutional membership, or free for contributors.

Listening Consultant

We have experienced that many projects in relation to listening is of inter-/transdisciplinary nature. This is why we offer a more general consultant service, in which we offer broader solutions on how listening can be fostered as part of a given project.

Price varies according to the project. (500-800 DKK/hour).

The Art of Unfinished Conversations

A listening session where individuals revisit conversations they never completed—whether due to time, distance, or personal reasons. Listeners help process and reflect on these unresolved dialogues.

1,000 DKK per session or free for cases of deep emotional importance.

Workplace Soundscape Assessment

An analysis of office or institutional sound environments, with recommendations on how to create a more mindful, attentive, and productive listening culture.

5,000 DKK per workplace assessment (includes recommendations).

Second-Hand Listening Exchange

A unique service where individuals share stories they have heard second-hand. The listener helps trace how narratives change through transmission, exploring misinterpretations, embellishments, and memory distortions

1,500 DKK per session or free if contributing a story that has traveled through at least three people.

Public Listening Booths

Temporary or permanent booths placed in public spaces where individuals can enter and be heard without judgment. A trained listener records key themes while maintaining confidentiality.

Free for users. Funded through institutional or municipal partnerships (10,000 DKK per booth installation).

By investing in one of our services you do not only gain a valuable service, you also support and strengthen our project to foster and care for listening as a way of being.

 

Bureau for Listening are in that sense, and as Be Oakly describes it in Manifesto, Profit-for-survival, 2022, not non-for-profit organisation, but a profit-for-survival or profit-to-continue-our-work-without-other-means-of-capital organisation.

 

We believe that (true, radical, sincere) listening always already is in opposition to exploitation. We must therefor be careful not to exploit, reduce or conceive listening as product in a capitalistic system. Our need for listening should not be used against our fellow existences.

Listening is fundamental – an act of care, attention, and presence – yet it is rarely given structured value. The Bureau for Listening explores this paradox: how do we price something that is both highly valuable for being a human, priceless perhaps, and at the same time taken for granted?

These services formalize listening as a practice, revealing its role in conflict resolution, storytelling, memory, public space – and as an artistic practice. Some offerings follow market logic, while others disrupt it, allowing listening to be exchanged, gifted, or withheld.

By setting a price on listening, we ask: What happens when attention is treated as labor? Who gets heard, and who remains unheard when hired? How to challenge the extractive nature of expecting but not compensating the listening of the workers? How is listening changed when offered at a price – in what ways do we listen differently when hired to do listen? How may we still reimagine support systems for those who listen? These questions challenge economic, artistic, and ethical assumptions, positioning listening as both a service and a radical act.