lovely lovely : First Spark: First Spark 2013 at Soundart Radio 102.5fm

First Spark: First Spark 2013 at Soundart Radio 102.5fm: The First Spark Radio Festival began in 2009 when we relaunched Soundart Radio under our new Community Radio Licence for South Devon after...

Radio Anywhere = YEAH ANYWHERE :-)

( but you do need plug in power )

POTENTIALLY radio from local pubs, and poetry clubs, schools and festivals; debates in cafes, round fires, at bus stops, radio in cars, and youth club breakfast bars; from allotments, and tenements, and pensioner's hairdressers'; from camp kitchens, and soup kitchens, and elevators, from street corners, and bowling allies, and soap boxes, from markets, skate parks, car parks and the job centre, from the playgroup and the workshop ......

Soundart Radio has successfully won a funding bid to purchase and put into action a mobile broadcasting kit. The 'Radio Anywhere' project has been running a six day workshop to train operators of that kit, and develop user projects to get it into use. The potential of Radio Anywhere ( essentially a neat little mobile studio ) has come at a time when the station had just downsized its' premises from a sweet suite of rooms to a cosy kiosk.

Seeing Radio Anywhere like a evolvement of and compliment to existing radio-making at Soundart Radio gives a lot of reassurance for the station's healthy future. Though the premises have downsized, the show goes on- Soundart Radio is growing and adapting to serve the wider (and wider) community -by working to become even more accessible, and taking opportunities to make radio in new situations : all the time allowing ideas of the broadcastable to develop.

Projects of neighbourhood radio and on-the-street radio (not limited to voxpops but radio made in the street by the street, for the street) have a really interesting history- two projects come to mind particularly. The 1980's Galway Women's Pirate Radio was run from a woman's home, and used to share news, ideas, poetry, and discussion, including that of the *illegal subject of abortion. Margaretta D'Arcy, who wrote about those broadcasts, said of such 'intimate' (50 Irish women participated) broadcasting projects- "only in small groups can there be full exploration of the three F's: freedom to give and receive information, freedom of expression and freedom of speech." The 1970's miniFM boom in Japan also broke open ideas of specialist skilled performers and unskilled passive audience by setting up radio stations in teashops and on street corners- a movement Tetsuo Kogawa said was full of "media experiments which led to a radical change in individual self expression, community relationships, and the meaning of communication."  Radio Home Run for instance, defined itself as a gathering place with a transmitting device- visitors and neighbours would congregate to discuss, argue, plan community action and develop social activities, theatre and music.

Contemporary radio practices the world over have really run with this too-  for example, the wonderful radio aporee project runs a global sound map, and a live broadcast, a dropbox for international participation, and ongoing artistic projects exploring ideas around networks and broadcasting, sonic geography and sound space. The soundmap not speech-specific radio, but the sounds of different environments.   I put on today’s’ radio aporee map, and heard recordings from ‘neighborhoods’ in 4 different continents.  Uno writes of initial idea of the aporee soundmap: "we're exchanging ears and sharing experiences from otherwise mostly unreachable places. For me it re-enabled and activated a formerly lost or inaccessible space." read the radio aporee blog here.… I love the way that different producers and recordists, in different societies, have different ideas for the use of radio, recording and noise- and are drawn to share aural aspects of what interests them across borders and media platforms. 

Radio Anywhere tech specs-
hmmmmm not my forte, but i'm working on it-
gonna have to draw a schematic ( in felt tip on the back of a used envelope of course ) to try to portray the wonderful world of relaying signals that will be flying hither and thither....

Radio Anywhere is tumblr-ing
and will be covering the Totnes Christmas Festival over the next 3 Tuesdays of December.

Kogawa, Tetsuo. Free Radio in Japan- the Mini FM Boom
D'Arcy, Margaretta. Playing With The Airwaves
both quoted from Radiotext(e) 1993