The Charles Parker Day 2015

The annual conference celebrating the radio feature – past, present and future comes to Scotland for the first time. Charles Parker was a BBC producer who, along with musicians Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, created a series of innovative radio programmes which became known as The Radio Ballads. These features creatively mixed actuality, speech and song to capture the extraordinary nature of people's lives.

2015 is Ewan MacColl's centenary and Peggy Seeger will be sharing her thoughts on working and living with Ewan - reflecting on the Scottish influences on his life, music and radio work with fellow musicians Bob Blair, Jimmie Macgregor, Alison McMorland and Geordie McIntyre.

Radio presenter and oral historian Alan Dein (Don’t Log Off/Don’t Hang Up) will be joined by BBC producer Caitlin Smith to demonstrate how they made their two ‘Lives in the Landscape’ programmes for BBC Radio 4 on the Craigmillar Estate in Edinburgh – The Doo Men of Burdiehouse and Craigmillar’s Caravan Converts.

Independent producer Matt Thompson of Rocket House Productions will be joined by Scottish BBC producers - Kate Bissell (The Actor’s Gang with Tim Robbins), Liza Greig (The Meaning of Mongol), Peter McManus (Digital Human) and Dave Howard (Being Edan) - to explore the ways in which they use elements of Parker’s techniques in their own radio features made for BBC Scotland, BBC networks and the World Service.

The conference also examines ‘political theatre’ and ‘political song’ – two big concerns of Parker after he left the BBC. The Janey Buchan Political Song Collection is housed in the University of Glasgow and John Powles, the curator, talks about the relevance of the collection today and reveals his own personal connection to the radio ballads. Elaine C Smith (Rab C Nesbitt) joins Dave Anderson (A Play, a Pie and a Pint) to discuss the importance of ‘political theatre’ in Scotland from 7:84 to the present day.

Sean Street, Emeritus Professor of Radio at Bournemouth University, introduces the ideas in his new book ‘The Memory of Sound’ which explores the importance of sound and music throughout our lives – and sound artist Mark Vernon previews the radio station Radiophrenia which will be broadcasting live from CCA in April.

The conference also looks to the future of the radio feature as the winners of the Charles Parker Prize 2015 for the Best Student Radio Feature will be announced.