Transmissions
XMTR Festival 26: Sweet Talk
Mri Berlin (DE, 2026)
Miri Berlin (DE, 2026)
9 min
A moment in a local kitchen, recorded and produced as part of the XMTR Festival residency. The cakes were actually made for the women selling their vintage items in the back garden, to enjoy with a cup of tea or coffee during their breaks. But somehow visitors and friends also found their way into the kitchen, and the cakes were so popular that they were soon gone. "Sweet Talk" is a collage of these small encounters in the kitchen. The cakes take centre stage, drawing everyone’s attention and becoming the focus of the conversations.
Produced by Miri Berlin
Commissioned by XMTR Audio Arts Festival 2026
XMTR Festival 26: St Leonard’s Bathing Pool Remembered
Mri Berlin (DE, 2026)
Mary Hooper (UK, 2026)
16 min
This audio work has been created with the voices of people who have memories of swimming and working at the former Bathing Pool in St. Leonards. The pool was built in 1933 as an Olympic training pool for the Empire Games, one of only 3 in the UK, and as a public resource to encourage health and fitness. The pool passed into private hands in 1960 and was turned into a holiday camp, but it became financially unviable by the 1980’s. The pool was demolished in1989 and is now a much contested site between local people who would like to keep the open space as community resource and a series of Developers, who plan to build up to 146 dwellings.
This collection of memories spanning 60 years of the Bathing Pool’s life is a remarkable example of how buildings can generate a Genius Loci of people and place. Memories, history and identity are anchored in these places, showing how important it is to create and preserve public spaces where everyone can congregate in an egalitarian space, building memories that last a life time and beyond, marking changes in culture, life style and community over generations.
Thank you to the people whose voices have contributed many precious, funny and moving memories that bring the Bathing Pool back to life: Cath Cooper, Andrew Weight, Doug Edworthy, Rob Edworthy, Sally Smith, Janette Morley, John Purfield, Jessica Beaghen, John Stout, and Polly Sharkey.
Produced by Mary Hooper
This audio story was developed with in collaboration with Lucia Scazzocchio Social Broadcasts and XMTR. Many thanks to Artists Now Company who provided bursary support to seed fund this project.
Commissioned by XMTR Audio Arts Festival 2026
Trip to Gurindji Country
Helene Thomas (AU, 2026)
Helene Thomas (AU 2026)
16 min
Five eager colleagues from the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association (CAAMA) set out from Mparntwe/Alice Springs, travelling 985 kilometres north to Kalkarindji, a remote Aboriginal community in the Northern Territory, to take part in the 2025 Gurindji Freedom Day Festival. Leading the way is Orlando Rubuntja, a young Indigenous media creator and broadcaster from Kalkarindji. This radio feature follows Orlando as he wrestles with the discomfort of interviewing his own people — the shame that surfaces each time he asks for an interview — set against the deep pride he carries as a Gurindji man.
Produced by Helene Thomas in collaboration with Orlando Rubuntja, Caleb Doolan and Brenton Woods from the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association (CAAMA). Freedom Day song by Lazy Late Boys
Festival Selects: Good Clean Fun
Hayley Clarke (UK, 2026)
Hayley Clarke (UK 2025)
5 min
In the past few years I have become fascinated with sauna culture, and its ability to bring people together. It allows people to connect with new people in a space that can often feel quite intimidating. You may encounter people from different walks of life, and speak to people you might not normally interact with. Yet somehow, you’re all on a level playing field inside this sweat lodge.
A couple of years ago, when I was on a self-imposed writing retreat in Worthing, I booked into a local sauna down the road in Shoreham. This is where I met Dan Lawson - Ultra Marathon Runner, Aufguss Master and one of the co-founders of Nomadic Sauna. This is his story to tell, and it’s all good clean fun.
Produced by Hayley Clarke
Festival Selects: Humare Tumare (Your Way, My Way)
Fin Kennedy (UK 2026)
Fin Kennedy (UK 2026)
1h32 mins
A feature length audio drama about an unlikely love story spanning 1960-70s London, India and Pakistan, with a glorious soundtrack from the period.
London, 1975. A young couple embark on a road trip to India and Pakistan with their 10-year old son, to reconnect with family across a border which never used to exist.
As the miles roll back the years, they are forced to confront the consequences of choosing love over tradition.
An epic new audio drama telling the true story of Surjeet and Iftikhar Husain, commissioned by their son Iqbal for his personal family archive.
After a live launch and listening event at Tara Theatre in London, and being featured on BBC Radio, the full drama is now freely available online.
The project showcases Applied Stories' unique approach to turning lived experience into compelling audio drama with an epic sweep.
Writer - Sharmila Chauhan
Director - Jatinder Verma
Sound design and music - Farokh Soltani
Producer and dramaturg - Fin Kennedy
Production assistant - Shemiza Rashid
Cast - Skanda Arun, Adwitha Arumugam, Bobby Khela, Shri Patel, Parvinder Shergill
Vi's Marvellous Rhymes
Catherina Rowland for BBS Community Radio (UK, 2025)
Catherina Rowland (UK 2025)
105 min
Violet Charlton was a 95 year old poet, or as she preferred to call herself, a "rhymester". This programme is a collection of her rhymes as read by Vi herself. Some are funny, some are sad but all of them are very entertaining. Also included is a short story and an interview about her life in Dagenham and her rhymes.
Produced by Catherina Rowland for BBS Community Radio
Muine Bheag -- Bagenalstown
Jack O'Driscoll & Mark Buckeridge (IRE 2025)
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
2025 Selects: RadioActive: On Water - Liquidation
Meira Asher (PS 2024)
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.
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
2025 Selects: Live or Dye
Maria Conterno (IT, 2024)
Maria Conterno (IT, 2024)
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
Gary's Lincoln Continental
Anna Van Dine (US 2024)
Anna Van Dine (US 2024)
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