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The More Than Words Listening Festival

2012-02-21T11:27:47+00:00

The Radio 4 More Than Words Listening Festival takes place in Bristol on March 16th, 17th and 18th this year. It's a celebration of sound, storytelling and the art of listening but also a celebration of a unique and enduring partnership with the city.

In 1934 the Lord Mayor of Bristol, one Herbert John Maggs, cut the ribbon to open four radio studios at 23 Whiteladies Road. Each was specifically designed for a different purpose - orchestral, dramatic, sound effects and "talking".

Initially "the West" was partnered with Wales but, after campaigning by local councils and MPs, the West of England Home Service was finally granted autonomy in 1937. BBC Bristol flourished but really came into its own during the war years.

The BBC's purpose - as laid out by Lord Reith - was to educate, inform and entertain and, during the war years, radio was a lifeline for the nation. In keeping with his Reithian values it was felt that boosting moral in wartime and keeping the population up to date with news at home and abroad was critical.

As the war escalated Broadcasting House in London became a frequent target for German bombers and the BBC decided to move its major departments out of London. Consequently children's programmes, the religious department, the variety unit as well as the BBC Symphony Orchestra were packed off to Bristol - 700 people in total.

Two extra studios were added to the Whiteladies Road HQ and several other locations in the city were made available to the BBC for recording plays, concerts, talks, quizzes and comedy shows.

With the fall of France in June 1940 Bristol came within the bombing range of the Luftwaffe and so, with the backing of the city council, the BBC headed underground into the Clifton Rocks Railway Tunnel where a transmitter, studio and control room were all concealed. Therefore, when the capital was under attack, London was able to quickly switch transmission to Bristol - sometimes in the middle of a news bulletin.

The point of all of this is to highlight Bristol's special role in the earliest history of the BBC and also to demonstrate the special relationship the Corporation has had and continues to have with the city.

In October 2009 the current Director General Mark Thompson signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Bristol creating the Corporation's first ever and only BBC-city partnership. The aim? To formally gather together Bristol's creative industries, community organisations and academic institutions to show that, by working together more closely, sharing expertise, resources and ambitions, there could be cultural and economic benefits for the people of Bristol, the city and the South West. In other words, after a rather long courtship, the BBC and Bristol tied the knot. So how is the marriage bearing up? Well, I think.

In terms of skills training, developing talent, sharing resources and expertise a lot has happened on the ground in Bristol over the last two and a half years. New job opportunities have been created and new alliances have been forged.

Culturally, out of that partnership, has come More Than Words - a weekend festival of listening with BBC Radio 4 at its heart. Radio 4 has been a presence in Bristol since 1967 when it replaced the Home Service. The current Controller of Radio 4, Gwynneth Williams, has put a focus on "the art of listening" for those of us who make programmes for the station and it's a perfect theme for More Than Words.

More Than Words will showcase and celebrate the best of Radio 4 in front of live audiences. We're keen to invite anyone who is curious about ideas and sound to join in and discover Radio 4 for themselves. More Than Words is also about bringing listening to life in Bristol not only through the rich Radio 4 output but through the fantastic partnership events sitting alongside the broadcast elements of the festival. Finding people to take part has been easy. It has worked because we already know each other; already know how to collaborate sharing our skills and talents to create something fresh for Bristol and the wider Radio 4 audience.

On the broadcast side we can promise a special 70th anniversary edition of Desert Island Discs recorded in front of an audience with castaway Jamie Cullum; Pink Mist - a contemporary reworking of Homer's Odyssey from the award winning poet Owen Sheers which takes us from Afghanistan to Bristol through the experiences of real life ex-service personnel living in the city; Anarchic theatre company Peepolykus offer a new comic adaptation of Sherlock Holmes and The Hound of the Baskervilles complete with special sound effects.

Poet and broadcaster Michael Rosen will be exploring the words and sounds that make children laugh in a special edition of Radio 4's Word of Mouth programme recorded with schoolchildren at the Bristol Central Library while writer Lynne Truss invites you to the beach in Tidal Talks as residents of a rockpool reveal the truth about life between the tides with Alison Steadman, Geoffrey Palmer and Tony Robinson.

Cerys Matthews will be centre stage for a special edition of With Great Pleasure and, as if that weren't enough, Great Lives, Loose Ends, Broadcasting House, The Wondermentalist Cabaret, Any Questions and Poetry Please are some of the other riches on offer.

Many of Radio 4's key presenters will be there including Kirsty Young, Jonathan Dimbleby, Clive Anderson, Arthur Smith, Harriett Gilbert, Paddy O'Connell, Fi Glover, Matthew Parris and Roger McGough.

On the ground in Bristol we will be running special More Than Words masterclasses and workshops on everything from poetry, pervasive media, digital and multiplatform storytelling, writing, comedy and active listening. Sound Adventurers from the city will be sharing their work and wisdom including internationally renowned artist Luke Jerram the creator of The Sky Orchestra , The Aeolus and who famously has installed 500 pianos across the globe from New York to Sydney bearing the simple instruction "Play Me I'm Yours".

Expect the unusual and surprising from a host of storytellers, poets, musicians, sound artists, performers and inventors as well as new work from some of the brightest young talents in the city and beyond all working in an extraordinary way with sound and pictures.

In a way, we are staying true to our roots and the purpose of the four studios originally built in Whiteladies Road in Bristol 1934. At Radio 4's More Than Words festival we will offer the orchestral, the dramatic, sounds effects and "talking" but with a 21st century twist.

Radio 4's More Than Words Listening Festival takes place in Bristol between Friday March 16th and Sunday March 18th. Even if you can't get there in person please do check us out online, on social media and by listening to our programmes on Radio 4. More details to follow.

Clare McGinn is Editor of Audio & Music Production at BBC Bristol

Apply for tickets to BBC programmes at More than Words
Find out more and apply for More than Words workshop tickets
Visit More than Words on the Radio 4 website
Read the More than Words press release on the BBC Media Centre website

Ice music from Norway on Radio 4

2011-02-07T21:29:27+00:00

Musical instruments carved from ice cut from a frozen fjorde, concerts by musicians from all over the world, held in snow flurries under the Northern lights. Not your typical music festival. These remarkable pictures, by photographer Emile Holba, were taken at the Norwegian Ice Music Festival, the subject of tomorrow's 'The Music That Melted', presented by Richard Coles and produced by Sara Jane Hall. Listen at 1330 on BBC Radio 4. There are more pictures on the Radio 4 site.

Nice work..

2009-08-17T16:45:00+00:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/edinburghfestivals/2009/

To the person who commented on my Latitude blog post, 'nice work if you can get it', yes, it's fantastic work. And not just because I'm writing this on Sunday morning on the train to one of the most beautiful cities in the world, Edinburgh. I'm working in Scotland for the next fortnight. We are recording a raft of comedies, Front Row, Loose Ends and some readings from The Pleasance as part of the Edinburgh Fringe.

Every show is 'full' so about 5000 people will get a chance to watch the recordings; they sold out very fast, but if you happen to be up there and would like to come to a recording we do create a standby queue. As the tickets are free people don't always turn up or don't use all the tickets they requested so we can very often fit you in. Full details are on the Edinburgh Fringe web site or come and find us in the Pleasance courtyard. I'll be there with Lea Lauvray and Gill Carter who are managing the shows with me and we will be sporting incredibly bright pink tee-shirts with BBC Radio 4 splashed across them with an amusing quote from R4 star and Fringe doyenne Arthur Smith and hopefully not looking too bedraggled. Because we are in a fully functioning city the planning is less extreme than for a music festival in a field however, of course, it will still rain. But the venues are usually boiling hot so you steam dry quite quickly.

Radio 4 has been broadcasting from the Fringe for about 15 years if not more. It is important for us, as home of Radio Comedy, the place where some of the biggest names in British comedy started out, to be there both as participant and audience. Programmes such as Today, Front Row, Saturday Review and others look across the breadth of events and report back on this truly extraordinary cultural event.

Planning which shows will be available to broadcast, creating new ones especially for the Festival, programming them so that each has just enough rehearsal time, the outside broadcast team have time to do the technical turnaround and we can get audiences in and out, sorting out the precise venues and the tickets with the Pleasance and the Edinburgh Fringe Box Office (endless forms and proof checking) and then making sure that each programme does not end up booking the same talent and completing the Health and Safety procedures all starts in early January and finishes just before we come up here.

Between the recordings I go and see a lot of comedy. In previous years I have seen about 60 odd shows. I liken it to a squirrel harvesting for the winter. The comedy producers and I will find ourselves referring back to this year's performances till next August. The performers have worked incredibly hard to get their show into shape and for many this is as good as they are going to get for the next year or so, they are in peak condition and so this is the time to see them. It wasn't always like that.

This is my 31st consecutive year at the Festival - I started stage managing and lighting shows and then directing them as a Manchester University drama student in the days when students could afford to come to the Fringe and you could sleep on the floor of your venue - and in the olden days you knew some performers were still in rehearsal mode for the first ten days or so. You can't do that anymore. It is a showcase, a jolly expensive one at that, and the acts need to hit the ground running to get good early reviews, ensure sell out shows, happy audiences who can be paying upwards of £8 a ticket, as well as charm the broadcasters and woo the judges of what was the Perrier Award, then the if.commedie award and is now the Edinburgh Comedy Award.

And this year that's me - as I've been asked to be on the judging panel. I arrive in Edinburgh at about 1.30 and by ten tonight I will have seen my first five shows. We make the final decisions as to the winners in a fortnight so lots and lots and lots of shows to see first.

The Edinburgh Fringe web site.
The BBC's Edinburgh page, with links to all of this year's festival activity.
The image is from a montage of archive footage from Edinburgh Festivals of the past, on the BBC's Edinburgh web site.

Radio 4 is back from Suffolk

2009-07-21T17:09:47+00:00

The office is full of people who spent the weekend at the Latitude Festival in Suffolk. They don't look visibly scarred, although apparently it rained more-or-less all the time. Absolutely no one was miserable, though, because there was no mud. Sandy soil, you see. That's the secret of a happy Summer Festival in Britain.

Radio 4 was at Latitude for the fourth year in a row and, in addition to presenting a lot of live shows for audiences on the Radio 4 Stage, also recorded plenty of material for later broadcast. Already you'll have heard Friday's Now Show, Saturday's Loose Ends and, this afternoon, the first of the Stories with Latitude, from Emma Kennedy. 4 in a Field, presented by Adam Hills, selects the best stand-up performances from the festival for the 6.30 comedy slot on Wednesday.

And there was Mitch Benn. This year, Radio 4's own satirical guitar God recorded three songs - each from a different part of the site (including a gondola on the lake) exclusively for the web site. They're all here and one of the interesting things about the whole thing is that you're encouraged to lift the videos and embed them on your own web site - and it's easy to do so (that's how I embedded the one at the top - instructions are here).

The BBC's Latitude site brings together content from all of the networks that were at the Festival - 6Music, Radio 2 and Radio 4.
The Festival's own site has photo galleries and some music.
East Anglia's local paper The Eastern Daily Press has comprehensive coverage of the festival.

Radio 4 at the Latitude Festival

2009-07-16T16:18:12+00:00

As I start writing this the countdown timer on the Latitude Festival website says there are 10 hours and 45 minutes and 3 seconds to go before the Festival starts. Which is a bit worrying as I have to drive all the way there from West London and I would not mind some sleep before it all kicks off. And I still cannot find my Wellington boots because it is going to rain. It always does. Peter Gibbs from the Met Office and our own GQT chair sent us a gloomy personal forecast.

Part of my job at Radio 4 is to organise our presence at Festivals and other events (such as the forthcoming University Tour). I started my working life as a theatre director and somewhere deep down the bug is still there for live performance.

When I suggested to the Latitude organisers, 4 years ago, that its line-up looked rather Radio 4-shaped - masses of poetry, theatre, writers talking, comedy - they declared they had felt rather the same. And when I asked if they would like us to come and do some of our programmes from there they welcomed us with open arms and four years on we are going again with an even bigger space and now joined by colleagues from Radio 2, 6Music, and 5 Live. And Radio Suffolk will be reporting from the event as well.

I won't tell you what the countdown timer says now as that will give away how long it has taken me to write this! I was supposed to have written it days ago but the organisation for such events can be pretty time consuming. Lea, my assistant, and I have to really sort out everything we need before we go. There is no broadband where we are, no stationery cupboard, no real way of printing anything out and the mobile phones work only occasionally. Passes for everyone including the performers have to be arranged and then checked and checked and checked again. Nightmare scenario is Steve Punt or Hugh Dennis stuck on the wrong side of the fence unable to get in because we forgot to sort out their passes. Any basic refreshments in our backstage area (a portacabin and a chemical loo and a large outside broadcast truck) we have to take with us too so the boot of my car is stuffed with UHT milk and teabags. We have a brilliant outside broadcast team led by Tim Allen but they work even better if kept fed and watered.

We'll be recording Loose Ends, The Now Show, two With Great Pleasures, specially commissioned short stories, and a comedy show 4 In A Field. However well produced our shows are (and I believe they are) there is something that happens when they are performed in front of a festival audience be it in a field with rain beating down on the marquee and the sound of rock in the distance or at a slightly more sedate literary festival. The celebratory nature of a festival is infectious. The audience are energetic and often have never had the chance to see a radio show being recorded and the performers feel part of a big party. That's one of the several reasons why we try and take our shows out as often as budget allows.

Why else do we go? It is a chance to encourage new listeners. Yes, some of them will be slightly younger. But it is not about changing the shows to lure them in but demonstrating how inclusive our work can be. It's also a great chance to meet listeners and talk with them about Radio 4. In return they have a chance to put a face to the network, as it were. Or a face to the voice as I discovered one year when someone outed me as the 'woman who's always on Feedback'. At Edinburgh, for example, there one or two people we see year after year who are die-hard Radio 4 fans alongside the students who tell us that they are seeing Just a Minute to find out what their mother's been going on about all these years and then at the end of the show come out beaming saying "Now I know!".

At Glastonbury one year we excited Roadies who got up early (that's 10am in Glastonbury time) to catch their hero Ned Sherrin presenting Loose Ends in the huge Comedy Marquee. And we met the teenager who accosted me demanding to know if I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue was going to be playing - he had bought his radio especially so that in the middle of one of the biggest music festivals he and his friends should not miss that day's broadcast.

There was was also the young woman no more than about 20 who was a huge GQT fan and wanted to know if they would come and record in her village. Now, I bet she did not have her own Peter Gibbs' personal forecast - not that you need it at Glastonbury. It rains. We all know that. But let's cross fingers for a fairly dry weekend in Suffolk. I hope you listen to the programmes and enjoy them. And if you happen to be going - come and say hello.

Caroline Raphael is Commissioning Editor, Comedy, at Radio 4

This year, Radio 4, Radio 2, 6Music and 5Live are all at Latitude. You can see everything they're doing, all in one place on this handy page.
The Latitude Festival home page
The picture is of the spectacular waterfall projection at last year's Latitude. It's there again this year. There are lots more pictures taken at Latitude over the years. Here's a set taken by David Jones, a member of the Radio 4 Interactive team who's at the festival again this year helping to get it all online.