BBC Radio 3 on the Southbank

BBC Radio 3 is taking up a residency with a pop up radio station at London’s Southbank centre for a fortnight of listener events, concerts and workshops  as part of a groundbreaking new arts partnership during the Pull Out All The Stops Organ Festival.

The pop up radio station is designed to allow listeners to feel part of the radio station.

The big boss at 3, Roger Wright explains :

“BBC Radio 3 is the home of classical music and plays a big role in supporting the UK’s arts and culture through innovative partnerships like this. We’re delighted to work with Southbank to bring an immersive experience of the organ festival to audiences in three dimensions through being on the ground at the festival with live events; bringing live concerts and the atmosphere of the festival to our millions of listeners via the radio; and through additional online learning and resource. There will be a multitude of ways for audiences of all ages to get involved and we can’t wait to take them behind the scenes to show what goes into making a Radio 3 programme.”

A purpose built radio studio is positioned in the centre for listeners (and non listeners) to come and check out the station during their visit to the attraction which will feature 15 live concerts and three world premiere performances as well as broadcasts of many of Radio 3’s regular live shows from a pop-up radio studio including, drive time show, In Tune, Essential Classics, CD Review, Free Thinking and Afternoon On 3.

Concerts

There’s a variety of free concerts taking place as part of the partnership which will also be broadcasted on BBC Radio 3 including San Francisco Symphony, Richard Strauss 150th Anniversary Celebration, Olivier Latry recital and the BBC Concert Orchestra. More details here.

Other names and on air guest performers performing at the season include:

Workshops and Community

Listeners are able to get their hands dirty by taking part in a variety of practical  learning and education initiatives about making live radio on site as part of the partnership.

The pop up station excercise is also engaging the local community as part of its listener engagement remit. Students based at Lambeth College enrolled in their radio course are getting the chance to be involved with their station Vox Radio as well as London based community station – Represent.

There’s also the launch of the BBC Radio 3 Academy, one on one tuition with BBC Radio sound engineers and insight into how the concerts broadcast from a technical viewpoint from the concert hall to your radio.

Talks

If you’ve a burning question for the boss aka Roger Wright, the controller of BBC Radio 3 then you’ll be able to ask the man directly on Friday 28th March  during a live Q&A broadcast at the Southbank Centre. He’ll host a session where he’ll be able to discus his career and his work at Radio 3 and the Proms and answers questions from the audience.

The station at large as a particular audience it gains due to its niche classical music programming – this is an attempt to “open” up the station to a wider audience by engaging them with the station, brand, is output and people at grassroots level.

With a variety of exciting radio related activities going on – we encourage Earshot readers to head down and check it out.

The BBC Radip 3 pop up radio ration runs till 31st March. You can find out more information about what is on and when on the Southbank website or via Twitter

Photograph: Meta-tweet by bitospud on Flickr. Used with kind permission.

Jonathan Jacob is a Solutions Manager at Global Radio with varied experience across commercial radio S&P, events, marketing and PR. He was listed in the inaugural Radio Academy 30 under 30, is a Student Radio Awards judge and sits on the Events Committee for The Radio Academy. Views are personal.