University of Sunderland

This year we're taking the day to London, within sight of Broadcasting House and the home of the BBC Radio Features Unit.

So, join us at the Regent Street Campus of the University of Westminster in London on Friday 30th March 2012 between 10AM and 430PM. Registration is at 10am, with the event formally starting at 1030. 

The event is kindly supported by the Charles Parker Trust, Centre for Research in Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Sunderland, Soundscape Productions, the University of Westminster and Prism Sound, the people behind SADiE

The Charles Parker Day Conference is a well established event in the national radio conference calendar and is an opportunity to reflect on this innovative producer's work and examine within a wider contemporary context the philosophy behind his radio productions. 

Charles Parker was born in Bournemouth on 5 April 1919 and went on to become a Senior Features Producer for the BBC in the Midlands.  It was during his time in Birmingham that he devised and produced his famous Radio Ballads with Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger. The Radio Ballads were musical montage features with skilfully integrated location recorded actuality and speech in programmes which celebrated the extraordinary lives of ordinary working people within British society through song and sounds.

This year in the ninth annual Charles Parker Day we celebrate the 50th anniversary fifth Radio Ballad - `The Body Blow' about `the psychology of pain' featuring the voices of people with poliomyeslitis' it was the first `budget' ballad, made very quickly and featured highly creative editing and structural techniques. This year's conference will examine the influence of `The Body Blow' and how it set in motion a change in radio's representation of disability issues. 

Plus Simon Elmes, the Creative Director of BBC Radio Features, presents the Charles Parker Prizes 2012 for Best Student Radio Features.

More details about The Charles Parker Day and how to register will be available here soon - so keep the date free for a fascinating foray into the radio feature -  past, present and future.