Communal listening

Where mostly do you listen to the radio? In the kitchen, on the M25 or M62, under the duvet, soaking in a bathtub? We’ve got used to moving around with the wireless, often listening with just half an ear, not really connecting at all, and with no opportunity to share the experience with anyone else. In the Dark, a band of radio enthusiasts who’ve got together to produce unusual audio documentaries, is trying to take us back to the sensation shared by those first listeners to radio, when families, friends, neighbours joined up to listen and laugh along to The Goon Show or Children’s Hour. They organise communal listening events in unusual venues, usually with the lights out, but with an unconventional twist. This is radio as ‘art’, not the mangled speech of politicians, DJ-managed music, weather alerts and shipping forecasts, but what In the Dark calls ‘found sound’ or ‘adventures in audio’.