2026 Charles Parker Day: Friday 8 May

The Charles Parker Day – the annual celebration of the audio feature, past, present and future – returned to the University of Salford’s Digital Media Performance Lab in MediaCityUK. The sessions during the day explored the power and importance of listening – both to the voices of ordinary people telling extraordinary stories, and to creative audio features, those which cease to be background sound and actually stop the listener in their tracks.

Manchester and Salford have played an important role in the history of the creative audio feature, from the pioneering work of Olive Shapley in the 1930s through to landmark strands such as Between the Ears in the present day.  In one session Mel Harris, from Manchester based Sparklab Productions, talked to Peter Everett, a key figure behind the innovative BBC North series Actuality and Soundtrack in the 1980s and 1990s – programmes that played an important role in the development of the modern audio feature and Matthew Dodd, the BBC commissioning editor responsible for Radio 3’s feature slot which demands listener concentration - Between the Ears. 

In the session ‘Who Get’s Heard’ we explored two contemporary radio features which, in very different ways, feel as though they are in conversation with the spirit of Charles Parker and the original Radio Ballads. Olivia Swift, is a  senior producer at Manchester-based Reform Radio, whose documentary The Door-to-Door Poet, made for BBC Radio 4, explores the work of the remarkable door-to-door poet Rowan McCabe.  And Nija Dalal-Small feature Testament to Rose focuses on Manchester’s almost forgotten Bard of Colour – Robert Rose.   Both features echo the legacy of Charles Parker and the Radio Ballads, exploring how contemporary makers are reimagining that tradition through documentary, poetry and community storytelling.  Other speakers during the day included producers Jo Meek and Geoff Bird from the Manchester-based collective Naked Productions who talked about their feature presented by the Liverpool poet Paul Farley about his own hearing loss Hearing Aids. Which featured recordings made an anechoic chamber at the University of Salford in which he could hear his own nervous system.

Another session ‘Composed Listening’ explored the music of original music in features with two  BBC Audio North producers.  Catherine Murray talked about her two features made with the BBC Philharmonic – one with Peggy Seeger celebrating Ewan MacColl’s famous Salford song ‘Dirty Old Town’ and her recent work with composer Hannah Peel commemorating the 80th anniversary of the Jodrell Bank Radio Telescope – based on listening to the sounds from outer space. Her colleague Lizzie Foster talked about her work with folk musician Sean Cooney (who also joined in the discussion) on a number of features and in particular The Suitcase. At his band, ‘The Young ‘Uns’, gigs audience members were encouraged to leave notes left in a suitcase at the front of the stage by which Sean then turn into songs. He also sang us one of the songs from the feature live. Lizzie also demonstrated the power of listening – with a story told to her by presenter Emma Freud which became their moving feature – CS Lewis, the Evacuee and the Wardrobe.

Tony Macaluso, one of the Charles Parker Archive Trustees briefly updated the conference on the latest finds in the Charles Parker Archive – including his unsuccessful pitches for programmes! Towards the end of the day Sara Parker talked to two former Charles Parker Prize winners – last year’s Gold winner Shadé Joseph and 2021 winner Hunter Charlton about their latest audio work – Shadé’s East London Audio Storytelling project ‘It’s the East in Me’ and Hunter’s formation of his own Newcastle based audio production company - Ember.     

Throughout the day Simon Elmes, the chair of the this year’s Charles Parker Prize judging panel, played extracts from all the 10 nominees before BBC Commissioning Editor, Hugh Levinson, announced the five winning features of the Charles Parker Prize for the Best Student Audio Feature 2026 which will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 during the summer.

The day concluded with a listening masterclass designed specifically for students, with advice from producers, commissioners and Charles Parker himself.  For other attendees there was a separate session focussing on the use of archive material. It included the discovery of new material in the Charles Parker Archive, and Sean Cooney talking about his new show Peter's Field based on archive accounts of Manchester's Peterloo Massacre. We also heard from Charles’ daughter Sara Parker and Philippa Donnellan, the daughter of Parker's colleague from BBC Birmingham Philip Donnellan, who made TV films based on some of the original Radio Ballads, also from Simon Elmes who was head of the BBC Radio’s Archive Features Unit.

The Charles Parker Archive Trust is a charity and the streamed version of the conference is available free of charge. If you are able to contribute, a donation towards the running costs of the day would be greatly appreciated.