Take part in a live broadcast sharing experiences of a landscape

26 January 2024

Take part in a live broadcast sharing experiences of a landscape

Fellfoot Radio, a 24/7 radio channel created by the North Pennines National Landscape team as part of a community arts project, is broadcasting sounds and voices recorded in, and live from, the landscape in Cumbria.

The radio channel brings together the sounds and music recorded during the Fellfoot Forward Landscape Partnership Scheme (LPS) arts project, ‘Everything changes, everything stays the same’, during which musicians and sound artists worked with five primary schools as well as communities to document the natural and social worlds of the area through sound.

Alongside the workshop recordings, programmes include sounds and voices captured during other Fellfoot Forward LPS projects. There are oral histories and interviews that Bring the Past Alive, a chat with a stonemason restoring one of the Monuments at Risk, performances at arts events, and adults with learning disabilities sharing how they feel about nature. There are also three live broadcasts from microphones placed in a churchyard, a cattle shed, and a windswept nature reserve.

Fellfoot Radio will broadcast live on Saturday 24 February in a special event from the Eden Valley Artistic Network gallery in Penrith. Anyone can attend the live broadcast, which will include interviews with residents, artists and ecologists who have taken part in the project, sounds of the landscape, music and some performances. If you’d like to be interviewed, perform a tune or poem, tell us a story, or share something of your life in the Fellfoot Forward landscape live on air, email fellfootradio@gmail.com or turn up on the day between 12pm to 5pm. If you can’t make the event, be sure to listen online from wherever you are:

John Coburn, Creative Producer for the community arts project, said: “Fellfoot Radio is filled with a spectrum of sounds from communities, the fells and farmyards, and the people who work here. It is a living, breathing record of a landscape and its people. It is a meditative experience – listening to the soft call of the tawny owl, the murmur of village life, slugs creeping across the microphone, the midnight bell tolling in a quiet village, the clank and groan of a cattle shed awakening. Fellfoot Radio isn’t just about listening; it’s about creating a deep connection and curiosity with this special landscape.”

Over 300 local residents have contributed to this unique aural exploration of nature and the lives lived in this beautiful part of the world. Artists, musicians, and groups have made their own recordings to capture their experiences and the broadcasts aim to inspire listeners to reflect on the ever-evolving narrative of the Fellfoot Forward area – how it has changed, and how it has endured through the years.

People can contribute their own sounds to the radio channel by recording some audio that offers a window onto their relationship with the Fellfoot Forward landscape – anything from sounds heard in the garden or on a walk, a conversation with a neighbour, sharing a story, playing a tune, or describing a place in the Fellfoot Forward area that is special to them.