Current Opportunities
Illuminated
We are currently looking for ideas for half hour documentaries for the Illuminated strand on BBC Radio 4. Here’s the brief:
After its first year on air, Illuminated is becoming recognised as the home of the most original, personal, surprising and human-centred features in UK audio. This is a slot for single, standalone features, 52 weeks a year, which are gathered under the overall Sounds/RSS Illuminated branding. This is a haven for radio beauty and joy, a feature-maker’s playground, an aural wonderland, a box of delights. The programmes should reproduce the texture of hidden worlds, to convey individuality, character and location. They should favour experience over analysis. They should take our hands and escort us into the outer reaches and unexplored corners of life in contemporary Britain and the world. This can be achieved through all the techniques of audio feature-making, including first-person scripted narrative, found sound, montage, music, live performance and indeed the unclassifiable and not-yet invented.
Some programmes may achieve distinctiveness by their simplicity – or by a conventional treatment of a very peculiar subject. What is omitted may be as important as what is included. Joy, uplift and humour will be welcome. We will reject ideas that amount to conventional documentaries plus sound design. The treatment should be integral to the idea, rather than a sugar dusting.
Storytelling must be at the centre of these programmes, though this need not be conventional narrative or exposition. But something must happen. Listeners must be engaged. The programmes must be accessible. The features should never be distorted for the sake of it. The clue’s in the title: illuminated, rather than obscure.
To listen to past examples head here.
If you have something you think would fit the brief please send a short outline to production@soundandbones.com and put Illuminated in the subject line.
If you have other ideas for a radio programme or podcast do get in touch with a short (300 words) outline of the project.