Wandsworth Council and Battersea Arts Centre Present: Hunt & Darton: RADIO LOCAL - NINE ELMS

This September, the residents of Nine Elms will join forces with innovative performance artists Hunt & Darton in partnership with Wandsworth Council and Battersea Arts Centre, to reimagine their upbeat show, Radio Local, through a grassroots campaign to celebrate the joys and necessity of local radio and community.

At a time when so many people are searching for entertainment and reassurance, Radio Local will be created with, by and for the people of Nine Elms using Hunt & Darton's ground-breaking hyperlocal approach to highlight the role of local radio in the community, and amplify the inspiring creativity, resilience and generosity of its members.

Collaborating with Riverside Radio, the bespoke hour-long programmes will be broadcast live from the South West London station every afternoon at 4pm from 7-13 September, and will be available to stream online via www.riversideradio.com. Highlights will be available following each broadcast via bac.org.uk

The line-up will include interviews with residents and business within Nine Elms, including Local Legends: former President of the Royal College of Midwives Caroline Flint, who founded the first natural birth centre in South London; Flora Yu, who started and led the Your Cakes initiative in Battersea, organising regular deliveries of locally home-baked goods to key workers throughout Wandsworth; Life Coach and Youth Leader Kafui Bresse, CEO of FAST London, an organisation which empowers and invests in the futures of young people from the Patmore Estate; and influential campaigner David Waterhouse, pioneer of the Tideway Village residential houseboat community which is moored on the Thames near Battersea Power Station.

Drawing on their signature deadpan, playful and inclusive approach, the shows will also feature absurd gameshows played by competing families, crowd-sourced jingles, song requests, hyper-local news bulletins including how young people are dealing with going back to school, and restaurant reviews - some of the area's unsung heroes will be given the chance to sample the best of the newly re-opened eateries.

Listeners across the UK have turned to local radio in huge numbers, with many stations reporting record listening figures as a result. Radio Local will celebrate everything about what it means to be local, a platform for Nine Elms to celebrate its cherished community groups and influential individuals, looking back over what residents have achieved by working together, and documenting their lives in times of crisis. Hunt & Darton's investigative reporting includes: a cooking tutorial from local six-year-old YouTube celebrity Little Chef; a performance from Battersea Power Station Community Choir; and a visit to family-run outfit Captain Corelli, where Battersea-based food-redistribution charity Waste Not Want Not set up a weekly pop-up restaurant in response to the pandemic, with Tate Britain Head Chef Alfio Laudani serving up dishes from surplus produce from New Covent Garden Market. Also recording content for Radio Local will be young people from the World Heart Beat Academy and the Elays network, who will also take part in workshops to build on these skills, learning how to produce their own radio shows.

Further content includes a guest commission from theatre collective HighRise, who will be holding important conversations with young people to challenge perceptions and highlight injustices of the highly politicised UK Drill music scene. Guest hosts include live arts company Action Hero, who return to London following their own international radio project RadiOh Europa.

Hunt & Darton are best known as creators of the award-winning Hunt & Darton Café, a pop-up interactive performance/ installation and fully-functioning café. The original format for Radio Local saw the duo trawl the streets looking for local stories and the burning issues of the day, from the comfortingly familiar to the quite extraordinary to the intriguingly absurd. Since the onset of the pandemic, they have taken the work online through partnerships with Norwich & Norfolk Festival, Culture Mile in the City of London and London Borough of Merton, creating a unique hyper local broadcast experience in each case.

Jenny Hunt and Holly Darton said "We feel privileged to have found a way to carry on making work in this adverse time. Radio is a superpower. We are ridiculously excited to still be able make this show with you all from our homes and show off some wonderful local communities, commission some great artists and share our collective experiences in this bizarre time. We feel more than ever the need to keep communities connected and to offer some light relief to people stuck at home. We cannot wait to collaborate with you - let's make some art, let's make radio!"

Cllr Steffi Sutters, Wandsworth Council's community services spokesperson said "The sense of community in Nine Elms has really shone through despite the challenges of the past six months so I'm delighted that we're able to share some of these amazing stories with listeners and show the real character of the area.

"There is always something new to learn about your local neighbourhood and here we have the opportunity to explore some of those hidden gems in Nine Elms from a new viewpoint."

For more information please visit www.radiolocal.co.uk

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