Muine Bheag -- Bagenalstown

Jack O'Driscoll & Mark Buckeridge (IRE 2025)

28 min

This episode of Muine Bheag Arts Radio delves into the name of our town -- Muine Bheag/Bagenalstown -- through archival recordings and on-the-street interviews, in order to understand its complex and unique history. We meet with local historian John Murphy, students from two of the local primary schools and members of the community to understand their perspectives on the town’s dual name.

Muine Bheag Arts is an artist-run organisation based in a small town in County Carlow that engages with the local context to present projects in the public realm. Guided by values of collaboration and experimentation, Muine Bheag Arts invites dialogue between artists, audiences, community and place.

The programme includes exhibitions, workshops, events, residencies, publishing and radio broadcasts. These platforms provide opportunities for artists to research, test and make through close collaboration with the organisation and members of the local community.

Produced by Jack O'Driscoll & Mark Buckeridge
Edited by Jack O'Driscoll

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2025 Selects: RadioActive: On Water - Liquidation

Meira Asher (IL/IRE  2024)

57 min

RadioActive - on Water is a six episode podcast series, exploring the interactions between transmission, sound, activism and water. Each episode is created by a different artist/group of artists who engage with water politics and the politics of listening through the medium of radio. ‘Liquidation’ by Meira Asher interrogates the politically engineered water crisis in the Occupied Palestinian Jordan Valley where Israel deliberately and strategically deprives Palestinian shepherd communities of access to water.

There is currently a structural water crisis in the Palestinian Occupied Jordan Valley. Not a climate or geographical water crisis, a deliberate socially and politically engineered crisis. Israel, since it invaded the West Bank in 1967, controls every public aspect of civilian life in the Jordan Valley. Israel administers two populations, the Israeli settlers and the indigenous Palestinian residents. Israel deliberately and strategically deprives Palestinian farming communities of access to fresh, clean and reliable water supplies, water that is needed for crops and herds, as well as for the Palestinian farmers and herders.

This can mean either not permitting them to be connected to municipal water supplies, despite the Israeli settlers having such access. It also entails not permitting Palestinian people to sink new wells on their own land, and blocking their access to existing wells and springs, either by fencing off the water source or destroying pipes bringing the water to the herders and farmers. The end result is frequently that either the farmers have to pay extortionate prices to purchase water from the Palestinian authority, or if they cannot afford this option they are forced to abandon their land and way of life.

Featuring the water truck driver, co-activists Natasha and Nitsan, shepherds community of Khalet Makhul, shepherd ‘W’, shepherds community of Hirbet Samra and Aref Daragmah.

English Transcript

Producer - Meira Asher
Translation from Arabic: Laila Abd El-Razaq
Introductory text: Liam Evans
Series - Co-curated by Stephen Shiell & Meira Asher, produced by Meira Asher. Episodes by Blanc Sceol (Stephen Shiell & Hannah White), Lisa Blackmore and Leonel Vásquez, RE-PEAT collective, Margarida Mendes, Carlos Monleon and Nathaniel Mann, and Meira Asher

Follow the series

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2025 Selects: Live or Dye

Maria Conterno (IT, 2024)

Kaleidacoustics · Live or dye

11 min

Four women talk about life, ageing, and accepting (or not) their ageing body. And the role society plays in that. Four different perspectives, four voices telling four stories that diverge, overlap and end up in the same bold choice: not dying their grey hair.

Produced by Maria Conterno

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Gary's Lincoln Continental

Anna Van Dine (US 2024)

Anna · Gary's Lincoln Continental

2 min

Gary of St. Johnsbury, VT, talks about the car that makes him happy. Her name is Big Red.

Produced by Anna Van Dine

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The Trees of Saunders Park

Claire Sabel and Alex Lewis (US, 2025)

34 min

The Trees of Saunders Park presents stories about trees and why people feel connected to them. It is centered on profiles of residents who have planted individual trees in Saunders Park, the main public green space in the West Powelton neighborhood of Philadelphia, a part of the city that has experienced considerable displacement and gentrification for decades. Though each tree story is unique, the piece explores connecting threads between them: the ethos of DIY planting, neighbors confronting gentrification, connecting to the earth in urban environments, communal joy in spite of neighborhood change and loss..

Written & hosted by Claire Sabel
Produced by Alex Lewis

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GROW

Cristina Catania Flores (UK, 2024)

Cristina Catania Flores · GROW: Audio Documentary

46 min

This audio-documentary wanders through the soundscapes of Sadhana Forest, a reforestation and zero-waste project in Tamil Nadu, India. Weaving interviews with over 20 community members, ‘Grow’ explores compassion, conservation and community living

Produced by Cristina Catania Flores
Music by Cristina Catania Flores
Sound Design by Cristina Catania Flores
Mastered by Ahmed Rezaie

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Sounds Like Lisbon

Eloïse Bertil (UK, 2025)

13 min

A sonic postcard from Lisbon, told through the perspective of artists in residence at Prisma Estudio during July. Blending soundscapes and interviews, this audio piece explores how the city's atmosphere has influenced their inspiration and creative process, with each sound filtered through their artistic minds. A sensory journey through Lisbon, seen (and heard) through outsider eyes.

Produced by Eloïse Bertil

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XMTR Festival Selects: Slag Speaks (Extract)

Emily Candela UK (2025)

5 min

‘Slag Speaks’ centres on a seemingly unassuming specimen found in the backroom archive of the Lapworth Museum of Geology in Birmingham: a small chunk of slag, cast off by a Bilston steelworks in the 1950s. Slag is an industrial by-product of steel production that is found all around the post-industrial West Midlands. While it is indelibly linked to the region, it lacks the public attention and respect reserved for monuments and the monetary value of the glistening minerals displayed in the front of the museum. Slag is easily dismissed. But it is a persistent and powerful reminder of the industrial past. ‘Slag Speaks’ is a polyvocal life story of slag, including voices of a steelworker, curator, geologist and the fictional voice of slag herself. Together, these voices stitch together themes of labour, the blurring line between human-made and natural, and the dynamics of the often-overlooked, or ‘slagged-off’ industrial byproduct and post-industrial region.

Produced by: Emily Candela in partnership with the Lapworth Museum.

It is part Emily’s Arts Council funded Sonic Minerals project that sits at the intersection of her audio and experimental history practices, and explores the role podcasting can play in museums.

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XMTR Festival Selects: Last Station Fog Stories (Extract)

Mary Hooper UK (2025)

5 min

This clip is a new mix from oral history recordings from 2013, Mary Hooper made for 'Last Station' a large scale Touring Project looking at the cultural history and legacy of UK Floating Lightships, devised by herself and Elise Liversedge .

Recording and editing: Mary Hooper

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XMTR Festival Selects: Moving House, Moving Kitchen

Lucy Dearlove (2023)

35 min

This clip is a new mix from oral history recordings from 2013, Mary Hooper made for 'Last Station' a large scale Touring Project looking at the cultural history and legacy of UK Floating Lightships, devised by herself and Elise Liversedge .

Produced and presented by Lucy Dearlove for the podcast Lecker

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