Charles Parker Day 2007

11 April 2007

2007 Charles Parker prize winner Katie Burningham with BU's Prof Sean Street

BU’s Centre for Broadcasting History Research celebrated Charles Parker Day with its annual conference in Birmingham.

Parker, considered one of British radio's most inspirational producers, revolutionised radio features in the 1950s with his now famous series of Radio Ballads for the BBC.

Parker was born in Bournemouth on 5 April 1919 and went on to become a Senior Features Producer for the BBC in the Midlands.

It was during his time in Birmingham that he made the first of his famous Radio Ballads - The Ballad of John Axon - defining the style of music and direct speech, montage, narrator-less features which celebrated the working anti-establishment in British society.

"Charles Parker's work has become legendary," said Professor Sean Street, Head of the Centre for Broadcasting History Research.

"This day is an opportunity to celebrate his work, and to examine in broader terms the art of the radio feature, past, present and future."

The annual conference is split between Bournemouth and Birmingham.

This year’s event, staged with the help of the University of Central England, drew a range of delegates including a number from overseas.

Papers presented included contributions from the folklore archivist, Doc Rowe, and BU PhD student Ieuan Franklin.

Dutch media scholar Professor Bert Hogencamp of the University of Utrecht made a stand-out contribution.

His talk on the acclaimed 1965 Derrick Knight film on the folk group, the Watersons entitled “Travelling for a Living” was made in the presence of the film-maker himself.

A feature of these conferences is the presentation of the annual Charles Parker Prize for Student Radio Features, run jointly by the Centre for Broadcasting History Research and BBC Radio Documentaries and Features.

This year’s winner is Katie Burningham, a Masters Student at Goldsmith’s College, University of London, who received £500 and a work placement with BBC Radio Documentaries and Features.

Katie’s winning feature, “Lieutenant Pigeon” focused on the bird feeders of Trafalgar Square.

This year’s judges were Simon Elmes, Creative Director of Documentaries and Features - Radio, Paul Donovan, Radio Critic of the Sunday Times, and Julian May, a BBC Radio features producer, whose documentary “Requiem for St Kilda” won Gold in last year’s Sony Radio Academy Awards in the Best Feature Category.

Next year’s Charles Parker Day will be held in Bournemouth on 4 April – the day before what would have been Parker’s 89th birthday. It will also celebrate the fiftieth anniversary – in June 2008 – of the first of Parker’s famous “Radio Ballads”, The Ballad of John Axon”, which was broadcast in 1958.