The Radio Garden: Private pleasures and public benefits

Abstract

The launch in December 2016 of the Radio Garden, an output of the EU-funded Transnational Radio Encounters (TRE) project, attracted a social media storm and hundreds of millions of page views. Since then, the number of visits has not significantly decreased. It is the ability to access live radio streams from stations across the world that is Radio Garden’s attraction, something which, in the years since its launch, the two authors have repeatedly witnessed: people, young and old, are excited by this ‘TRE’. With a touch of the screen, Radio Garden offers an escape from the bubble of ‘likes’ to new musical and linguistic encounters, geographical difference and distance, perhaps even an escape from the bubble of nationality. For older people, the surfing recalls the dial-searching of the first radio age ‐ an adventure, but a safe one. In this article, two co-investigators in the original TRE project discuss what these encounters mean for listeners and its continuing popularity during the 2020‐21 pandemic. They demonstrate how the platform has enabled people to participate in radio in new ways and discuss examples of the social and educational benefits and the personal pleasures it affords its users in the United Kingdom and beyond.