Radio Ballads
Songs for Change
K. Verlag Anna-Sophie Springer
1st Edition
Published on 7. April 2024
Book
Hardback
608 pages
978-3-947858-62-0 (ISBN)
Description
Radio Ballads: Songs for Change
Layla Gatens, Elizabeth Graham, Amal Khalaf, eds.
Radio Ballads: Songs for Change takes its name from a groundbreaking series of BBC radio programs broadcast between 1957 and 1964-a time of profound social transformation across the UK. These original Ballads combined song, sound, and storytelling to bring the lives of workers and underrepresented communities into public earshot, challenging mainstream narratives and giving voice to those rarely heard.
More than sixty years later, this publication extends that legacy. Developed through the Serpentine Civic Projects in London, Radio Ballads documents the commissioning of four contemporary works by artists Sonia Boyce, Helen Cammock, Rory Pilgrim, and Ilona Sagar. Created in long-term collaboration with carers, organizers, social workers, and residents in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham (2019-23), these new Ballads emerge from the lived experiences of those who sustain civic life-often invisibly-through networks of care, resilience, and mutual support.
At the heart of the book are eight conceptual "songs": Working In and Against Systems, Listening, Processing, Embodying, Dreaming, Supporting, Connecting, and Voicing. These threads weave together complex, intimate stories of navigating health and care infrastructures, domestic violence, terminal illness, grief, and end-of-life experiences. Together, they reflect on how creative collaboration can open spaces for collective healing and critical resistance.
Radio Ballads invites us to listen differently-to imagine new ways of gathering, organizing, and creating solidarity. In a time of fragmentation and crisis, it asks: what kinds of collective songs do we need now?
Radio Ballads: Songs for Change. Edited by Layla Gatens, Elizabeth Graham, and Amal Khalaf. With artistic contributions from Sonia Boyce, Helen Cammock, Rory Pilgrim, and Ilona Sagar. The publication also includes newly commissioned and previously published texts by Sanah Ahsan, Camille Barton, adrienne maree brown, Jemma Desai, Priya Jay, Rae Johnson, Gail Lewis, Layli Long Soldier, Staci Haines, Saidiya Hartman, Aisha Mirza, Meenadchi, and Jackie Wang, as well as a foreword by Serpentine director Hans Ulrich Obrist. Additionally, it features insights from practitioners in the field of care work, including social workers, youth offending service providers, harm reduction facilitators, end-of-life care practitioners, somatic therapists, community organizers, and more. Design by Elisabeth Klement. Book photography above by Matthew Ritson.
Layla Gatens, Elizabeth Graham, Amal Khalaf, eds.
Radio Ballads: Songs for Change takes its name from a groundbreaking series of BBC radio programs broadcast between 1957 and 1964-a time of profound social transformation across the UK. These original Ballads combined song, sound, and storytelling to bring the lives of workers and underrepresented communities into public earshot, challenging mainstream narratives and giving voice to those rarely heard.
More than sixty years later, this publication extends that legacy. Developed through the Serpentine Civic Projects in London, Radio Ballads documents the commissioning of four contemporary works by artists Sonia Boyce, Helen Cammock, Rory Pilgrim, and Ilona Sagar. Created in long-term collaboration with carers, organizers, social workers, and residents in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham (2019-23), these new Ballads emerge from the lived experiences of those who sustain civic life-often invisibly-through networks of care, resilience, and mutual support.
At the heart of the book are eight conceptual "songs": Working In and Against Systems, Listening, Processing, Embodying, Dreaming, Supporting, Connecting, and Voicing. These threads weave together complex, intimate stories of navigating health and care infrastructures, domestic violence, terminal illness, grief, and end-of-life experiences. Together, they reflect on how creative collaboration can open spaces for collective healing and critical resistance.
Radio Ballads invites us to listen differently-to imagine new ways of gathering, organizing, and creating solidarity. In a time of fragmentation and crisis, it asks: what kinds of collective songs do we need now?
Radio Ballads: Songs for Change. Edited by Layla Gatens, Elizabeth Graham, and Amal Khalaf. With artistic contributions from Sonia Boyce, Helen Cammock, Rory Pilgrim, and Ilona Sagar. The publication also includes newly commissioned and previously published texts by Sanah Ahsan, Camille Barton, adrienne maree brown, Jemma Desai, Priya Jay, Rae Johnson, Gail Lewis, Layli Long Soldier, Staci Haines, Saidiya Hartman, Aisha Mirza, Meenadchi, and Jackie Wang, as well as a foreword by Serpentine director Hans Ulrich Obrist. Additionally, it features insights from practitioners in the field of care work, including social workers, youth offending service providers, harm reduction facilitators, end-of-life care practitioners, somatic therapists, community organizers, and more. Design by Elisabeth Klement. Book photography above by Matthew Ritson.