After Confession

We make confessions every day: to professionals, family and sometimes people we’ve only just met. But what happens to those confessions once they are made? Where do they go, and what effect do they have on the people who hear them?

From priests to beauticians, AI bots to mothers; After Confession tumbles between the worlds of those who regularly carry the weight of other people’s admissions. Revealing truths can feel like an act of release - a shedding of guilt, worry or uncertainty. But they do not simply disappear. This programme explores the burdens, thrills and creative material that confessions leave in those who listen.

‘After Confession’ is the Gold Winner of the Charles Parker Prize 2026 for the Best Student Audio Feature and was produced by Sarah Frosh who studied on the In The Dark radio course last year. The judges said her production was “A proper feature....A really excellent piece of work by a real author, carefully crafted and richly put together”. One judge “really liked the breadth of interviews and the AI voice took me into worlds I’d never considered. And by the end all of the different threads pulled together into something strangely beautiful.”

The awards are presented every year in memory of the producer Charles Parker who produced the pioneering series of Radio Ballads with Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger. This series is introduced by Charles’ daughter, Sara Parker, an award-winning radio producer in her own right.

Artwork by Peter Carrick

Producer: Sarah Frosh
A Soundscape production for BBC Radio 4.