Distraction Therapy Podcast – Radio Without a Platform

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What does it mean to create sound-based art—be it speech, music, or recorded actuality—when there’s no sustainable platform to support it? This is the paradox many sound artists, radio makers, and experimental producers face today. The tools to record, compose, and broadcast have never been more accessible. But the frameworks that make this work viable, sustainable, and visible—especially in cities like Leicester—are fragile at best.

At Radio Lear, we’re testing what a platform for emergent sound-based arts might look like. Not just technically, but culturally and civically. We’re asking: what kind of radio can support artistic risk, challenge dominant narratives, and make space for new ways of listening? And how do we do this when commercial media is mostly geared towards junk content—repetitive, packaged, algorithm-friendly—offering distraction rather than connection?

The Platform Problem

Creating sound-based art is not the problem. The problem is where it goes, and who hears it.

Artists and producers working in sound often find themselves scattered across disciplines and infrastructures: contemporary art, music, podcasting, theatre, installation, digital media. These worlds don’t often speak to one another. Radio—once a unifying medium—is now marginalised as either heritage or utility. The artistic possibilities of radio are rarely taken seriously, especially in English-speaking countries.

In Leicester, a city rich in cultural diversity and creative talent, the absence of a shared platform for experimental, emergent, or reflective sound-based work is deeply felt. Commercial radio plays it safe. Community stations often lack the capacity or remit to take artistic risks. Public service broadcasters offer diminishing space for anything that isn’t ratings-driven or mass-palatable.

So we ask: what kind of broadcast ecology could support a different mode of listening—one rooted in curiosity, empathy, and artistic exploration?

Radio as a Site of Possibility

Around the world, there are fragments of inspiration.

In Germany, the Kunstkopf (binaural) tradition of public broadcasting carved out space for spatial and philosophical experimentation. In Latin America, radio comunitaria has long blurred the lines between activism and audio poetry. In Japan, micro-FM networks like Radio Home Run reimagine transmission as social sculpture. Even online-only collectives like Radio Art Zone or Wave Farm offer examples of artist-led, durational, and improvisational radio works.

But these models depend on infrastructure: transmitters, licences, institutions, time. Not just one-off commissions, but sustainable rhythms of production, exhibition, and discussion.

Without that, sound art drifts—uploaded to platforms designed for commerce, not care. Buried in algorithmic timelines. Listened to in isolation. Removed from the civic context radio once offered.

So here’s the provocation: What would it take to create a dedicated broadcast platform for sound-based arts in Leicester?

And more challengingly: Can radio be reimagined not as a nostalgic medium, but as a live, local, and collective space for sonic experimentation?

What Might Be Possible?

A dedicated platform for sound-based arts in Leicester could:

– Host live and pre-recorded works by artists, musicians, and storytellers rooted in the city
– Connect local practice to global movements in experimental sound and radio art
– Support collaborative learning in sonic composition, field recording, and performative audio
– Offer a space where marginalised voices can speak—not in polished soundbites, but in full, reflective forms
– Challenge the dominance of “junk media” by creating space for difficult listening, slow time, and poetic interruption

But this requires more than airtime. It needs a different philosophy of broadcasting. One that values the process as much as the product. One that invites participation without demanding polish. One that holds space for uncertainty, ambiguity, and resonance.

This is not a call for “better content.” It’s a call for a different relation to sound, speech, and listening.

Towards an Emergent Broadcast Culture

Radio Lear is still in its early stages. But already, we’re thinking in terms of emergence rather than format. We’re not just filling airtime—we’re cultivating space. We’re not chasing audiences—we’re inviting listeners. We’re not polishing segments—we’re making space for sonic encounters, however rough-edged or unresolved they might be.

This is part of a broader movement—what some call the radio arts, others call expanded listening, and others still see as part of a metamodern sensibility: a refusal to be either cynical or naive, professionalised or amateurish, singular or fragmented. Instead, it’s about holding tensions and broadcasting from the edges.

We want to work with artists, producers, and listeners who feel that same pull. Who see sound as a space of possibility, not just a backdrop. Who hear radio not as nostalgia, but as a medium for transformation.

So the question remains: What kind of radio does Leicester need? And what kind of platform can we build together—one that honours artistic risk, community memory, and the unfolding textures of sound?

If you’re interested in being part of this, let’s talk.