A Race Apart

Sarfraz Manzoor presents a follow-up to his investigation of faith schools in the UK, A Class Apart, by visiting the US where, forty years after the Civil Rights campaign to end educational segregation - involving James Meredith, the first black student to be admitted to the University to Mississipp - large numbers of students of colour opt for what are known as HBCUs, historically black colleges and universities.

To be broadcast on 29 February 2008.

Musical Migrants

In this series of five montage features, professional and amateur musicians relate how particular musical genres inspired them to abandon former lives and move to an unkown place purely for its music.

Featuring Yoko Noge, who moved from Japan to Chicago for the blues, Scott Feiner, who swapped New York for Brazil and the pandeiro, Bruce Greene, who left New Jersey for the Appalachians in pursuit of old time fiddle, Martin Green, who migrated north from England to learn Scottish traditional music and Eva Wolff who emigrated to Argentina from Belgium for the tango.

Produced by Rachel Hopkin.

For broadcast 5-9 May 2008

Heartbreakers:

The Story of All-Girl Zep

A portrait of all-female Led Zeppelin tribute band Lez Zeppelin, as they complete their European tour.  Featuring vocalist Sarah McLellan, guitarist Steph Paynes, bassist and keyboard player Lisa Brigantino and drummer Helen Destroy.

"Quite possibly the most powerful all-female band in rock history." Spin Magazine.

Presented by Amy Jane Hall with Alan Hall

Produced by Katie Burningham.

For broadcast in 10 May 2008

on ABC Radio National's Into the Music.

Sounding Post

In this composed feature, Nina Perry explores the relationship between music and wood by tracing the origins of the wood used in the making of a musical instrument back to a tree in the forest. 

With contributions from guitarist Laurence Juber, Irish flute maker Martin Doyle, forester Martin Charlton, wood supplier David Dyke, luthier Martin Bowers, Paul Scott of the Greenpeace Music Wood Campaign and craftsmen and villagers from the Mpingo Conservation Project in eastern Tanzania. 

Produced by Nina Perry.

For broadcast on Friday 9 May 2008 at 11am.

A Map of Paradise

Paradise may no longer feature on maps of the world but its imprint is still powerfully evident in the hearts and minds of humanity.

For Between the Ears, we examine the draw that notions of paradise have on different individuals and attempt to map paradise, spiritually, psychologically and politically, in the hope of understanding the significance it holds. 

"Look closer, said the programme ... knitting past to present, visions to realities, opening wide the mind's eye once more to the elusive horizon of human perfectability."

Gillian Reynolds, Daily Telegraph 3.6.08

Produced by Alan Hall & Katie Burningham.

For broadcast 24 May 2008.

Women of Guantanamo

An investigation of allegations that women prisoners have been detained at the US camp at Guantanamo Bay.

Produced by Ellie Richold & Alan Hall

For broadcast in week 26, 2008.

Lonely Nights

Completing an accurate map of all the stars in the night sky is the lifelong goal of astonomer and self-confessed nocturnal hermit, Brian Skiff.  He spends an average of 150 nights a year 'at the eye piece'.

In Lonely Nights, we experience a typical night in the life of one of this dwindling number of professionals as Brian searches for comets, locates 'near to earth orbiting astroids' and pursues his "filing project of astronomical proportions".

"... a wonderful documentary ..."

BBC Radio 4 Pick of the Week 1.6.08

"Its blend of night sounds - frogs, elks, coyotes, and the clunking of heavy telescopes - melted into ambient music to make a hypnotic, sensual tapestry."

Elisabeth Mahoney, The Guardian 27.5.08

Produced by Diane Hope & Alan Hall

For broadcast Monday 26 May 2008

at 11.30pm

Leonard and Marianne

Leornard Cohen's muse when he turned from poetry to song-writing was a beautiful Norwegian woman immortalised in the song

So Long, Marianne - this is their story, based on the award-winning programmes made for NRK by Kari Hesthamar.

Produced by Alan Hall and Kari Hesthamar.

For broadcast in Saturday 2 August 2008.

"...both of the interviews had a dreamy quality and listening to the two voices of Leonard and Marianne all these years later made for a programme you want to hear again and again."

BBC Radio 4 Pick of the Week 3.8.08

"...a melancholic and incredibly moving memoir."

Tony Peters, Radio Times

Like Blackpool Went Through Rock

On 2 July 1958 listeners to the BBC Home Service heard a new kind of radio feature: a programme without a presenter in which actuality, location-recorded speech and working class recollections were carried in a narritive song.  This was The Ballad of John Axon about the death of a railway worker in a train accident - an event that occurred in February 1957.  It was to be the first of eight Radio Ballads made over a period of six years by radio producer Charles Parker and folk singers Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger.

Marking the 50th anniversary of the broadcast of this first Radio Ballad, Sean Street considers the strengths and legacy of this innovation in feature making.  With contributions from Peggy Seeger, Gillian Reynolds and Piers Plowright. 

Produced by Sara Parker.

Presented by Sean Street.

For broadcast 21 June 2008.

The Queen of Connemara

Her songs have been covered by the Wolf Tones, the Clancy Brothers, the Dubliners, even The Pogues... Delia Murphy, the folksinger known affectionately as 'Murphs', almost single-handedly prompted the Irish Folk Revival and captured in song an expression of emerging Irish nationhood. 

In this programme for Newstalk 106, Sean Street, whose Irish mother loved the music of Delia Murphy, embarks on a personal journey and presents a profile of one of Ireland's most important singers:

"I grew up haunted by the sound of this slightly cracked, off-kilter voice, coming, it seemed to me, from another age, and from another world to my Portsmouth naval upbringing.  Long after my mother's death - and Delia's - the music continues to haunt." 

With contributions from Murphy's biographer Aidan O'Hara and others.

Produced by Alan Hall.

For Broadcast on Newstalk 106 in May 2008.

Hark!

The inhabitants of Elizabethan England were gripped by sound far more strongly than we are today.  They not only heard sound differently, but they heard different sound, and the listened to a much wider variety of it than our modern ears do.  Their acoustic matrix was more complex, their 'heard horzion' further away and in terms of acoustic ecology, more 'populations' of sound existed before later industrial society threatened many of those sound 'species' with extinction.

Inspired by the observations and ideas of acoustic academics, artists and composers, 'Hark' builds a soundtrack of Elizabethan society.

"It is sound alone, that doth immediately, and incorporeally affect us most."

Francis Bacon, 1626.

Produced by Chris Brookes and Alan Hall.

For Broadcast in October 2008.

Before Their Time

In February 2007 Gerry Adams unveiled an extraordinary new mural in West Belfast.  Rather than reflecting one side or other in the sectarian conflict of the city, it's an anti-suicide painting by artist Frank McQuigley that publicly acknowledges a growing phenomenon. 

Gerry Anderson examines a phenomenon that casts a shadow over the community of Northern Ireland and raises searching questions about life and death inthe north since the end of the 'Troubles'.

Produced by Gerry Anderson.

For broadcast on Newstalk 106 in May.

The Ballad of the Radio Feature

One former head of BBC Features department stated that the "destiny" of the radio feature was to "mirror the true inwardness of its subject"!

In this edition of The Archive Hour, Alan Hall brings together, virtually, members of the international community of radio feature-makers to consider how the form evolved and to consider its particular qualities.

With Edwin Brys (Belgium), Berit Hedemann (Norway), Chris Brookes (Canada),

Kaye Mortley (Paris-based Australian),

Robyn Ravlich (Australia) and  

Piers Plowright, Simon Elmes, Sarah Taylor and Mark Burman.

And extracts from:

Von Trapped by Natalie Kestecher (ABC)

Singing the Fishing by Charles Parker (BBC)

Setting Sail by Piers Plowright (BBC)

On Naxos by Kaye Mortley (ABC)

Map of the Sea by Chris Brookes (CBC)

Steel by DG Brideson (BBC)

Undergraduate Summer by Stephen Potter (BBC)

L'Italien de la Rue des Cloys by Fabrice Pinte (Radio France)

The Long March of Everyman by Martin (BBC)

Ian Gardiner's Monument by Alan Hall (BBC)

Cockroach by Harri Huhtamaki (YLE)

Lives in a Landscape: Terence by Sarah Taylor (BBC)

Everyday Something Disappears by Luc Haekens & Edwin Brys (VRT)

Ghetto Life 101 by David Isay (WBEZ Chicago)

Jason and the Thunderbirds by Mairi Russell (BBC)

The Park by Simon Elmes and Sara Parker (BBC)

The Brown Parcel by Kari Hesthamar (NRK)

Don't Hang Up by Mark Burman (BBC)

Music written and played by Thelonius Monk, Gerry Mulligan and the Keith Jarrett Trio,

including This is My Story, This is My Song.

"...a guff-free hour, celebrating the sometimes magical thing that is the radio feature...an experimental, atmospheric and self-referential programme.  "It certainly doesn't sound like an LBC phone-in" suggested feature maker Mark Burman.  Precisely."

Elizabeth Mahoney, The Guardian 30.06.08

Produced by Alan Hall

For broadcast on Saturday 28 June

at 8pm (BST)

Hearts, Lungs and Minds

In 2007 sound artist John Wynne was artist-in-residence for one year at Harefield Hospital in Middlesex, one of the world's leading centres for heart and lung transplantation.  He worked with patients to capture their experiences, recording the sonic environment of the hospital itself and, with the help of medical techinicians, recorded devices such as VADs (Ventricular Assist Devices) both internally and externally.

John Wynne uses these recordings as compositional elements, revealing a world in which aural objects shift and surprise and where the listener is invited to explore deep within sound itself. 

Produced by John Wynne.

Broadcast on 21 June 2008.

Letters To Myself

They say letter writing is dead, now proved redundant in a world of emails, instant messaging, and texts.  But there is a special, secret world of letter-writing which remains untouched by this mania of immediacy.  Letters to our future selves.

Letters to Myself is a crafted feature constructed from the letters people have written to themselves, to be opened years later by an older, wiser them.

Produced by Sandhya Suri.

For broadcast in 2008.

City Messengers

Everyday, more than 400 cycle couriers race across London delivering packages and jumping red lights.  In some ways, they lead a carefree life - cruising outside all day on bikes, often without brakes.  But they're also embroiled in city life and the pressures that go with it: if package isn't delivered, they don't get paid.  It's a strange situation to be in, and through their eyes we get a unique perspective of urban life.

In this half hour programme, Katie Burningham explores the alternative and somewhat precarious lifestyle of a city cyle courier.

Produced by Katie Burningham.

For broadcast Monday 18 August 2008.

Turning Japanese

In this two-part series, Andy Parfitt visits Japan to explore how and why his own life was changes by Japanese culture and technology as a teenager as well as how the current boom in the popularity and ecomomic power of Japanese culture is affecting young people in the UK today.

Produced by Alan Hall.

For broadcast spring 2009.

The Repo Men

Mark and Ginger are Repo Men.  They spend their days driving around the country looking for cars that people can't afford to keep.  For each car they recover, they are paid a fee by the finance company that lent the money to buy it.  Sometimes it's a simple case of turning up, asking politely for the keys and driving off.  On other occassions they virtually have to "steal" the cars.  Confrontation is part of the job but not as much as people imagine.  There are more tales of good-humoured banter and compassion than beatings and shotguns.  (Though that does happen). 

In this programme, we spend a day with Mark (an ex-chef) and Ginger (an ex-bouncer) as they hunt down listed cars, recover them and take them to the auctioneers. 

Produced by Arelen Harris and Peregrine Andrews.

For broadcast in autumn 2008.