Listening Day has been happening annually on July 18, since 2010, and the fourth annual World Listening Day happens on Thursday, July 18. The purposes of World Listening Day are:

to celebrate the practice of listening as it relates to the world around us, environmental awareness, and acoustic ecology;
to raise awareness about issues related to the World Soundscape Project, World Forum for Acoustic Ecology, World Listening Project, and individual and group efforts to creatively explore phonography;
and to design and implement educational initiatives which explore these concepts and practices.
World Listening Day is co-organized by the World Listening Project (WLP) and the Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology (MSAE). July 18 was chosen as the date because it is the birthday of the Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer, who is celebrating his 80th birthday this year. Schafer is one of the founders of the Acoustic Ecology movement; the World Soundscape Project, which Schafer founded in 1971, is an important organization which has inspired a lot of activity in this field. The culmination of the World Soundscape Project’s pioneering research into the sound environment is described in his seminal book, The Tuning of the World. Published in 1977, it gained international attention and defined many new terms and concepts in sound and ecology popularly used to this day.
www.worldlisteningproject.org/‎