Rural Media HLF project announcement

Rural Media are forging ahead with their latest Heritage Lottery project The Flashing Lanes. They’re working with our Trust and the Archive at the Library of Birmingham, and have interviewed Charles’ daughter and granddaughter – she has made some new music for the project. Here’s a summary – see their blog for more info

“Through workshops and interviews we have been working with a number of Gypsies and Travellers across the country to reflect and respond to the seminal work of BBC Radio Producer Charles Parker, Ewan Macoll and Peggy Seeger and their production of the ‘Ballad of the Travelling people’ which was produced over 50 years ago.

“We’re currently finishing production of a documentary fronted by our Travellers Times Editor-at-Large, Damian Le Bas, which reflects on the issues facing the Travelling Community then and now. The team have travelled from Inverary in Scotland to talk to Jess Smith at the Tinker’s Heart to Brighton to meet with young Irish Traveller Samson Rattigan via Oxford and London to interview Peggy Seeger & Charles’ daughter, BBC producer Sara Parker. The documentary builds to the re-imagining and recording of a new modern Radio Ballad, scored and performed by Irish folk singer Thomas McCarthy with violin and female vocals from Charlotte Andrews, Charles Parker’s Granddaughter. The project will bring this important body of work alive to a whole new generation of Gypsies and Travellers.”