Monday 11 September 2023

Welcome To ArtsLab

Hello dear visitor! It is now September the 11th 2023 and I'm writing a blog post about ArtsLab. ArtsLab began when I joined the wonderful RedShift Radio in Nantwich in 2015. The people there and the whole experience was wonderful, life-changing in many ways. We community radio producers and presenters were given the freedom to craft a show as we saw fit. For the first year I showcased strange and arty music, and added various anarchic or surrealistic features. Most episodes featured special guests. For series 2 and 3, in a bid to boost listenership and audience engagement, I adopted a bold new format where all of the content (or at least, as much as possible) was created by listeners, artists, or anyone else, and sent to me each week for broadcast.

This blog is an archive of the programme episodes. All of the episodes were originally uploaded onto the RedShift Radio MixCloud account for streaming, but some episodes vanished after a few months, and over time it seems that more and more are disappearing. I will endeavour to keep adding any that are missing to my MixCloud account to keep this cultural resource available.

This blog was an attempt to preserve the record of this unique show. Many of the audio artworks are unique, created by a small band of artists and poets specifically for the programme and never performed or broadcast since.

Enjoy browsing this blog, and if you can find the episodes, enjoy listening. Tags here are used for the artists or poets who contributed works in series 2 and/or 3, and only present when the contributor has appeared on more than one show.

You can find links to the ArtsLab episodes on MixCloud via the Links gadget on the right. These were originally uploaded as part of the RedShift Radio MixCloud account, which I cannot access or maintain, so you may need to search to locate specific episodes.