Communal listening | 5 April 2018

To Herne Bay in Kent for the UK International Radio Drama Festival: 50 plays from 17 countries in 15 languages broadcast over five days to the festival audience. It’s an opportunity to find out what radio plays sound like in other countries, but also to experience a different kind of listening. About 25 of us were invited into a suite of rooms furnished with flock wallpaper, floral sofas and armchairs to take us back to the great age of radio listening in the 1950s. A kettle boils in the background; buttered scones on a tiered rack are sitting ready for us to pounce on at the next pause between plays.

Melanie Nock and Jonathan Banatvala launched the festival four years ago, surprised by the fact that the UK, the biggest consumer (and producer) of radio plays in the world, didn’t already have its own celebration of this very particular, and very of-the-moment art form.