The 2025 Charles Parker Day will be on Friday 16 May
The Charles Parker Day – the annual celebration of the audio feature, past, present, and future – returns to London on Friday 16 May, hosted by Goldsmiths College, University of London, in the Professor Stuart Hall Building. We are delighted that the day will once again be chaired by Kellie While.
Charles Parker famously collaborated with Stuart Hall on ‘We Lived Across the River’, a programme exploring migration. The interviewer and researcher for this programme was Dilip Hiro, who sadly died last year. Dr Aasiya Lodhi, from the University of Westminster, will reflect on their working relationship, which spanned several impactful programmes. The event will also explore how the radio ballad format – pioneered by Charles Parker, Ewan MacColl, and Peggy Seeger – has evolved over the decades.
Contributions include insights from Hugh Levinson, BBC Radio 4's Commissioning Editor for Reactive Factual, whose remit includes the new creative features strand Illuminated; the team behind ‘The Ballad of Scout and the Alcohol Tag’ Illuminated episode, produced by the multi-award-winning team at the Prison Radio Association; and ‘The Ballad of the Crocodile and the Underpass’, a community-based audio production created by local residents in the northeast to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Washington New Town.
Alan Hall and Eleanor McDowall, from Falling Tree Productions – one of the UK’s most creative and multi-award-winning independent production companies – will share insights into their innovative work.
The winners of the 2025 Charles Parker Prize for the Best Student Audio Feature will also be announced. The winning features will be broadcast by BBC Radio 4 as part of the New Storytellers series during the summer. Goldsmiths’ students have won more Charles Parker Prizes than any other university. The event will include a session with past winners, offering a chance to discover where their careers have taken them since.
The day will conclude with a choice of sessions: a Masterclass on selling creative features for students or an in-depth discussion of the radio ballad legacy for other attendees.
Booking is now open - registration is free but we hope you can give a donation of £5-£20. Book your tickets here
Registration will begin at 1230 and the conference will start at 1300.
The Professor Stuart Hall Building faces onto College Green and is 10-15 minute walk from both New Cross Gate and New Cross stations.
For information on how to get to Goldsmith's, University of London:- https://www.gold.ac.uk/find-us/
It is recommended that you visit a local cafe before the conference as there will be no catering in the building - but afternoon tea/coffee will be available during the afternoon break.