The 2025 Charles Parker Day was held on Friday 16 May
The Charles Parker Day – the annual celebration of the audio feature, past, present, and future – returned to London on Friday 16 May, hosted by Goldsmiths College, University of London, in the Professor Stuart Hall Building.
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, reflected on their working relationship, which spanned several impactful programmes.
The event also explored how the radio ballad format – pioneered by Charles Parker, Ewan MacColl, and Peggy Seeger – has evolved over the decades. Contributions included 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 – shared insights into their innovative work.
The winners of the 2025 Charles Parker Prize for the Best Student Audio Feature were also announced, and full details can be found at cpatrust.org.uk/prize/2025winners. 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 and in a special session we met some of these past winners, offering a chance to discover where their careers have taken them since.
After a short break for afternoon tea/coffee, the day concluded with a choice of sessions:-
A Student Masterclass on creative features with Benbrick ('Have you Heard George's Podcast') and how to pitch your ideas with commissioning editors
An in-depth discussion of the radio ballad legacy for other attendees including a preview of the new series of 21st Century Folk on BBC Radio 2