It is based in Canterbury, Kent, offering anyone and everyone an opportunity to celebrate radio drama through open access to the live listening sessions in person and online. The Festival is organised by International Arts Partnership.
7th Edition
The 7th edition will be entirely online from 22 – 26 March 2021
The festival aims to bring diverse work from across the world, introducing a UK audience to the European tradition of audio drama often anchored in soundscape whilst celebrating our own more text based tradition. The festival provides a UK audience with the rare pleasure of listening to audio drama in other languages, supported by English language translations of the script. The festival also brings together work from national broadcasters with that of emerging independent producers and is proud that the major prizes have largely been awarded to this exciting but lesser known work.
Awards are made by a jury – membership of which is open to anyone who commits to listening to all the work across the week – and which always includes international producers who have travelled to the festival with their work. An audience award – unique in Europe, decided by popular vote and open to anyone anywhere in the world to vote – complements the jury award and usually goes to work which has not achieved a jury award.
In 2021, we are the first festival to introduce a collaborative creative strand alongside the listening sessions. We will be awarding a micro drama award for a 20 second piece made by a collaborative team during the week of the festival.
Alongside the professional festival, an outreach programme takes the opportunity to make radio drama into local schools and community groups, culminating in a Community Showcase on the last Saturday of the festival.
We've recently produced a radio drama for People with Dementia and run a pilot for a Young People's Radio Drama Festival.
