Creative Arc Commission: River Radio
Art Work Exeter: River Radio
Themes: People & Place-shaping; Environment
Art Work Exeter is a small, artist-led organisation whose work offers opportunities to connect, learn and feel inspired through accessible encounters with art and creative activity. Art Work Exeter are Cultural Partners at Exeter Custom House 2023-26.
River Radio is a community radio project that will broadcast 60 hours of place-based, co-created and curated radio content non-stop from Exeter Custom House between 8am on Friday 13 Sept - 8pm on Sunday 15 Sept 2024. River Radio aims to engage deeply with the hyperlocal places of the River Exe where it meets the Quayside and Ship Canal, and explore how its more hidden sounds, stories, histories and geographies can be brought to life with the communities that live there and the wider world.
To achieve this, between late June and early September 2024, Art Work Exeter will invite people who live and work on or near the Quayside, or regularly visit it, to collaborate with sound artists, radio professionals, researchers and project partners to listen, interpret, record and broadcast sounds and stories from this historically important part of Exeter. A series of free workshops and training sessions will offer experience in creative approaches to radio production as well as more journalistic, magazine style recording and live broadcast training. Artist-led workshops will use outdoor listening, sensing and creative activities to respond to River Radio themes and places. Community members will be supported to follow their own River Exe interests to create short, pre-recorded programmes for broadcast in September. Experienced radio professionals will run sessions in live broadcasting to enable participants to host their own river-themed, live radio shows supported by a professional studio manager. These new sound materials will be curated with field recordings from favourite river spots, existing sound materials made about the Exe, recordings from the Heritage Harbour Shanty Festival and the sounds of other rivers of the world in a full weekend of lively and accessible listening.