Songs & readings from RADIO BALLADS: SONGS FOR CHANGE
with contributions from Camille Barton, Elizabeth Graham, Elisabeth Klement, Rory Pilgrim and Robyn Haddon
Thursday April 17, 6pm
What kinds of collective songs are needed today?
Radio Ballads: Songs for Change takes inspiration from the revolutionary Radio Ballads series that were broadcast on the BBC from 1957–64, a time of rapid change across the UK. Combining song, music and sound effects with the voices and stories of communities, each original Ballad focused on the lived experiences of workers and groups whose voices were rarely, or never, heard in the media. Over sixty years later, Radio Ballads: Songs for Change (2019—2023), builds on these histories of collective song and storytelling. The publication shares the process of creating four new Radio Ballads, with artists Sonia Boyce, Helen Cammock, Rory Pilgrim and Ilona Sagar in collaboration with carers, organisers, social workers and residents in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham.
Radio Ballads: Songs for Change centres the voices and experiences of people whose care keeps many of us afloat through civic, grassroots and informal networks. Sharing complex and intimate stories of living and working through multiple ongoing crises, these four projects are woven together by eight songs for collaborative work: Working In and Against Systems, Listening, Processing, Embodying, Dreaming, Supporting, Connecting and Voicing. Together they consider how creative collaboration can open up new spaces to process experiences of mind/body health, domestic abuse, terminal illness, grief, and end of life care. Radio Ballads: Songs for Change looks at how we can generate interdependence through collective healing. Exploring new possibilities for us to gather and organise together, it asks: what kinds of collective songs are needed today?
Radio Ballads: Songs for Change is designed by Elisabeth Klement and edited by Elizabeth Graham, Layla Gatens and Amal Khalaf.
Copublished by Serpentine with K. Verlag.