2025 Selects: Shorn Women

Chloe Turpin (UK/FR 2025)

33 min

At the end of WWII, around 20,000 women across France were accused of ‘horizontal collaboration’. Their alleged crime: sleeping with German soldiers. And their punishment was having their heads shaved and facing a public beating. Chloe’s grand-mother’s Émilienne was one of the shorn women of French liberation. Like many others at the time, her story was always shrouded in shame and mystery.

From uncomfortable conversations with family members in Brittany to a trawl through the French National Archives, Shorn Women looks at this controversial and overlooked historical event. Confronting official and personal narratives, it's a story about justice, taboo and the power of speech.

Produced, Written and Music by Chloe Turpin
Voices: James Davey, Naomi Bloomstein and George Roll

---

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

---

XMTR Radio Hour #39: Radio Limbo

Produced by Social Broadcasts (UK 2025)

60 min / Episode 38 of 38

In this XMTR (Transmitter) radio hour we are taken into the liminal audio apace that is Radio Limbo. This guided audio trip is  an unusual quest through original music, collage, soundscapes, and disembodied voices. The show celebrates radio as a shape-shifting portal to other worlds, a wilderness of its own, and its unique qualities of companionship. Join Pete for this curation and performance of surreal scenes and sonic experiments, using local intrigue and lost histories as the jumping-off point. This was recorded live at the XMTR Audio Arts Festival in St Leonards-On-Sea.

Radio Limbo aka Pete Hazell is a music and audio artist based in Bristol. His various projects fall under the ‘Limbo’ umbrella, known for their signature blend of curious music, sound design, storytelling, and collage. His cassette label Limbo Tapes focuses on releasing music, monthly residency on Bristol’s Noods Radio. In 2024, Pete released the audio series Limbo Calling as a podcast, expanding the Limbo universe through character, voice work, and surreal audio fiction.

XMTR Radio Hour Produced by Lucia Scazzocchio

Follow the series

---

All Under One Magnetosphere

Hannah Kelp-Welch & Oliver Sanders (UK 2025)

28 min

Electromagnetic waves fill the universe, radiating  from solar storms and bursts of lightning, but also from our electronic devices and infrastructures. Using simple, DIY tools, a community of audio enthusiasts translates these waves into sound, uncovering hidden sonic worlds.

Five dedicated ‘natural radio’ enthusiasts venture beyond the electromagnetic pollution of the city, tuning into the Earth’s natural static to reveal a rich, textured soundscape rarely heard.

Stephen McGreevy, a cult figure within this practice, shares stories of his recordings during the geomagnetic storm of 1989. Hannah Kemp-Welch travels to northern Norway in search of the electromagnetic waves of the aurora borealis, struggling to escape the omnipresent hum of the mains power grid. Alyssa Moxley captures the crackles of shooting stars in southern France; Matt Parker ventures into the National Radio Quiet Zone in Virginia, USA; and Anonea experiments with antennas from a remote location in northern Spain.

This audio feature encourages listeners  to contemplate the vast, often invisible role electromagnetism plays in our daily lives. It invites us to look up at the sky and imagine radio waves bouncing off layers of the atmosphere, connecting us all under one magnetosphere.

Produced by Hannah Kemp-Welch and Oliver Sanders

Research & Development: Hannah Kemp-Welch
Editing & Sound Design: Oliver Sanders
Executive Producer: Lucia Scazzocchio

Special thanks to Anonea, Alyssa Moxley, Dan Tapper, Francesca Thakorlal, Matt Parker, Rob Stammes, Rebekah Breding, Ruth Stewart, Sébastien Robert and Stephen P. McGreevy.

A Social Broadcasts production for BBC Radio 4- Illuminated

---

Glittering Prospects

Anna Bertmark (UK, 2025)

annamybertmark · Glittering Prospects

20 min

Set on Brighton Beach in 2098, an local metal detectorist records search-reports for the Council's new Portable Foundle Department; a new requirement since mysterious artefacts have started appearing on the beach...

Glittering Prospects is an immersive audio drama exploring humans' relationships with changing coastal environments through treasure hunting and local folklore. This 20 minute peice weaves together Brighton Beach’s hidden histories, environmental mysteries, and the stories of those who search its shores. Inspired by cinematic interview techniques, found audio recordings, and through interviews with metal detectorists, wildlife and folklore experts, the piece presents a compelling fictional documentary drawing from the world of treasure hunting and local coastal history and superstitions. Through the power of place-based storytelling, this immersive listening experience explores how lost artefacts buried beneath our feet reveal meaningful stories.

Written and Produced by Anna Bertmark
Performed by Rachel Capell
Funded by the National Lottery.

Find out More

---

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

---

Seven Minutes, Seven Years

Anna Van Dine (US 2024)

Anna · Seven Minutes, Seven Years

7 min

As long as Anna has been interested in sound and documentary, she has recorded things. What does it sound like when you take seven years' worth of recording and condense it into seven minutes? What does time sound like? What does memory sound like?

Produced by Anna Van Dine

---

NOISE CAPITAL

Sofia Kourous Vazquez, (PY/UK 2025)

52 min

NOISE CAPITAL is completed feature-length audio documentary exploring our complex relationship with the urban soundscape. How does sound become noise, and who decides?

The programme blends interviews with a range of contributors including soundscape researcher John Levack Drever, the Noise Abatement Society, venue operators at MOTH Club and the George Tavern, acousticians, nightlife advocates, mediators, venue owners, and writer Emma Warren. Through these voices, the doc examines the frictions between complaints, regulation, and cultural expression.

Produced by Sofia Kourous Vazquez 
Music by Jake Thomas

Produced as part of an audio storytelling MA

---

Echo Charmer

Xelís de Toro (UK, 2025)

Xelís de Toro · Echo Charmer_underwords

5 min

Vocal with electronics, sound poetry, concrete poetry.
Xelis de Toro is a Galician writer and performer based in the UK.

Composed by Xelis de Toro
Produced by Paul Dutnall, published in vol. 6 compilation by Chocolate Monk

---

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

---