Transmissions
Radio Ballad: On The Edge (1963)
Ewan McColl, Peggy Seeger, Charles Parker (1963)
Ewan McColl, Peggy Seeger, Charles Parker (UK 1963)
59 min
This new revolutionary format - radio ballad (BBC) conceived by folk musicians Ewan MacColl, Peggy Seeger, and the brilliant radio documentary maker Charles Parker in 1958, combining sound: songs, instrumental music, sound effects, and, most importantly, the recorded voices of those who are the subjects of the documentary. This had never been done before, and still sounds incredibly fresh today.
This Radio Ballad explores the lives of teenagers in the 1960’s with voices of young people from all over the UK. If you’ve seen C’mon C’mon where Joaquin Phoenix plays Johnny a radio journalist touring the US to talk to teens, this piece sounds even more ahead of its time.
Producer: Charles Parker
Music: Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger
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Birds Eye View: Ep1 Making Herstory
Story Projects (AUS 2020)
Produced by Story Projects (AUS 2020)
38 min / Episode 1 of 10
BIRDS EYE VIEW is the culmination of a two-year audio storytelling project run by StoryProjects in the Darwin Correctional Centre. One of a number of public health initiatives designed to minimise alcohol-related harm, the project involved workshops and mentoring in field recording, interviewing, editing, vocal techniques, body percussion, scripting and slam poetry.
Framed by three questions - Who are we really? How did we get here? and Where to next? - project participants documented their memories, reflections and the everyday routines of prison life.
Episode 1: Travel into the Darwin Correctional Centre where you’ll meet Rocket, who has spent most of her adult life in prison, along with a bunch of birds.
Executive production: Johanna Bell
Production: Cinnamon Nippard, Leah Sanderson and Johanna Bell
Mixing: Hamish Robertson
BIRDS EYE VIEW was co-created with women in the Darwin Correctional Centre. Over two years, more than 70 women engaged in the project, with more than 30 regularly involved.
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The Assassination of Alex Odeh
Kerning Cultures (US/UK 2022)
Alex Atack / Kerning Cultures (UK / US 2022)
43 min
Alex Odeh was well known in the Arab community in Santa Ana, California. He was often on TV or writing into newspapers, talking about discrimination against Arabs in the US or about his beloved homeland, Palestine. But on the morning of October 11th 1985, he stepped through his office door and a pipe bomb exploded. He died hours later. From the beginning, the FBI had strong leads and a list of suspects. But decades later, Alex Odeh’s murder is still unsolved.
From the Kerning Cultures Network based the Middle East, that also happens to be
emale-led, featuring Arabic and English podcasts
Produced by Alex Atack
Edited by Dana Ballout.
Sound design by Mohamad Khreizat
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African Space
Sound Africa (SA 2015)
Jedi Ramalapa / Sound Africa (SA 2015)
40 min
Africa is hardly thought of as a continent much involved in space exploration.
An episode of 2 halves:
The Afronaut: An introduction to a largely forgotten space program in Zambia in the 1960s. Did the leader of this wildly ambitious project, Edward Nkoloso, have a plan or was he just the delusional eccentric he was later made out to be?
The Telescope: A small town in the Karoo Desert of Northern South Africa has finally found its place in the world with the establishment of one of the biggest international science projects of our time. As the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) begins to take shape, we look at the telescope network that will likely transform the way we understand the universe and our place in it.
Produced by Jedi Ramalapa and the Sound Africa network
Dingus - Ep 1 The House of Glass
Mike Cooter / Resonance (UK 2022)
Mike Cooter /Resonance (UK 2022)
31 min Episode 1 of 6
Dingus is a six-part radio drama produced by CBS and recorded at the height of the 1943 flu pandemic that swept through Hollywood. Denied of a marquee cast and blighted by a curious obsession with the object that drives its narrative, this innovative and formally-reflexive oddity disappeared almost completely without trace.
In 2010 artist Mike Cooter set out to find and rehabilitate this elusive artefact, initiating an 11-year journey that culminates in the re-emergence of Dingus – to be broadcast in full by ResonanceFM, podcast and archived at radiodingus.com
Ostensibly a detective drama, taking its name from an American colloquialism for an object without name or of indistinct identity (from the German ‘ding’ / ‘thing’), Dingus emerges across six episodes and a supplementary documentary as a rumination on objecthood itself: how we claim to understand some-thing, and the effects that it might have. At once both utilising and unpicking the narrative conceit of the MacGuffin, Dingus can be heard to reverse the logic of an object that serves to drive a narrative, functioning instead as an armature for the mysterious artefact at its heart: the MacGuffin as sculpture.
Confused? This series merges fact and reality with a hyper-realistic recreation of the 1940’s American detective Radio Drama genre. Perfect listening for a dark winter’s evening.
Written, directed and produced by Mike Cooter
Executive Producer Ed Baxter
Cast: Mirchell Mullen, John Christian Bateman, Alexendra Metaxa
A Resonance Production with support from Jerwood Arts, The Elephant Trust and The Henry Moore Foundation
Oscillations - Push To Walk
Jane Curtis and John Jacobs (AU 2022)
Jane Curtis and John Jacobs (AU 2022)
17min, Episode 3 of 4
In Push to Walk: A People’s History of the Pedestrian Button find out how the PB/5 pedestrian button came to be a fixture on Australian streets from the people who helped make it happen: engineers, Vision Australia advocates and the blind and vision impaired communities.
This is part of a series that takes artists and listeners deep into the Powerhouse's collection of half a million objects to unearth stories about the vibrations, fluctuations, and movements woven through our world – and beyond it.
Produced by Jane Curtis and John Jacobs
Narrated by Bernie Hobbs
Hidden in Plain Sight: The San Francisco Poet’s Street-Corner Oasis
Samuel Robinson (UK/US 2017)
Samuel Robinson (UK/US 2017)
9min
On a street-corner, amidst the pigeons, San Francisco’s invisible stars shine.
Around 10pm to midnight each Thursday, at the nondescript intersection of 16th & Mission in San Francisco, regulars, newcomers, and intrigued passers-by gather around an intricate chalk circle drawn on a concrete plaza; a long-running freeform street happening welcoming poets, musicians, comedians, and all forms of creative expression is about to start.
The Corner' as it's known to the numerous regular patrons is an empathetic and accessible-by-design space to exercise San Francisco's best tradition of free expression. Offering community, solidarity, and a public voice for all it resonates with — it is an opportunity for those in the shadows to shine; creatively sharing the inner workings of their mind and experiences living in city witnessing rapid societal change and greater economic inequality.
This beautifully crafted non-narrated montage piece takes the listener right to the heart of this spot in San Francisco - it has a real Kitchen Sisters feel to it.
Produced by Samual Robinson
Recording support: Bayley McMillan.
In The Dark Bristol: Life Partners
Christina Hardinge (UK 2022)
Christina Hardinge (UK 2022)
10 min
In The Dark Bristol - New Producers
What happens when we reframe the relationship to our body as a life partnership?
Life Partners is an immersive unscripted story that brings this question to life, as Hania Fares recounts the highs and lows of her 32-year relationship to 'Bea'.
The piece is inspired by counselling/psychotherapy techniques that ‘bring to life’ trauma through characterisation, adapted by the producer into a device for documentary storytelling after her own experiences of working with this therapeutic process.
Christina Hardinge is an award-winning audio producer, filmmaker and artist working creatively in the field of documentary.
Her work has won the Charles Parker Prize and been broadcast on BBC Radio 4.
Produced by Christina Hardings
In The Dark Bristol: Hidden In The Hills
Chris Baker (UK 2020)
Chris Baker (UK 2020)
5 min
The physical distance between Cornish houses can stretch out for many miles, and public transport between them is typically infrequent and overpriced. In many parts of Cornwall, internet access is still slow, and in some places, un-obtainable. Whilst this can be a nuisance for many adults, it can be incredibly detrimental to the lives of young people. Without the proximity of support and services, the future of this country is quickly becoming hidden in the hills.
Young people selected from different communities across Cornwall were interviewed about their experiences of isolation. These interviews have been brought together to form one shared story. Recordings from the Cornish countryside were also embedded alongside other sounds to try and create a more immersive experience.
Created by British composer and sound designer Chris Baker, this audio work is a combination of sound and speaking. ‘Hidden in the Hills’ is a sonic painting that aims to be both creative and inventive, whilst also relevant to modern Britain.
Produced by Chris Baker
The Last Bohemians LA: Gloria Hendry
Kate Hutchinson (UK 2022)
Kate Hutchinson (UK 2022)
32min Episode 2 of 8
The Last Bohemians meets maverick and radical women in arts and culture and takes listeners on a vivid, hallucinatory trip through their extraordinary lives. From subversive musicians and style icons to game-changing artists, these are women who have lived life on the edge and who still refuse to play by the rules.
Lost and feeling adrift during the pandemic, host and creator Kate Hutchinson decamped from London to Hollywood in search of the wildest women in the City of Angels to help her get her mojo back. From Sunset Strip sexpots to Downtown artists, she meets a range of incredible women – and one artistic dynasty! – among the palm trees and bougainvillaea to glean some much-needed advice.
In this episode we meet Gloria Hendry. She made film history with Live and Let Die, becoming Bond's first Black love interest, and took on edgy roles in what were known as the blaxploitation films of the 1970s. She talks about being a trailblazer, raunchy sex scenes, what being a Playboy Bunny taught her about life and how she paved the way for Black women in film.
Her voice is infectious and she describes in her down to earth way how she navigated Black civil rights, feminism, being part of ‘Black Renaissance’ movies and how to navigate being a woman of colour in the entertainment business. Her motto ‘it doesn’t matter what you think of me, I can’t do anything about it’