The Media School

Charles Parker Day

In its first year the Centre established an annual radio features conference based on the work of the producer, Charles Parker, who was born in Bournemouth. The Charles Parker Day Conference is now an event established in the national radio conference calendar.

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."

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 that first “Radio Ballads”, The Ballad of John Axon”. Details will be released here shortly.

It will also see the award of the 4th Charles Parker Prize for the best student radio documentary feature

2007

Speakers included Ben Harker the official biographer of Ewan MacColl, Folk culture archivist Doc Rowe and documentary specialist Prof Bert Hogenkamp.

2006

Speakers included Sara Parker and John Tams, who talked through the making of the six new Radio Ballads, recently broadcast on Radio 2. And Graeme Mills who shared personal insights of working with Charles on in the fifties and sixties.

2005

Speakers included Nancy Thumim from the London School of Economics on ‘Mediating ordinary people's stories' and a keynote speech from Virginia Madsen of University of New South Wales on auter documentary making since 1968.

If you would like to receive more details of this conference, information relating to the Charles Parker Award for Student Radio Features, and/or other Centre events, please send your name, address and email to:

Professor Sean Street
The Media School Bournemouth University Weymouth House Talbot Campus Poole Dorset, BH12 5BB	Email: sstreet@bournemouth.ac.uk Tel: +44 (0)1202 965747