When radio arrived in the 1920s and 1930s, it provided the first-ever form of home-based mass entertainment. This story is almost always told from the broadcasters’ point of view. But what was it like for the very first listeners as they welcomed this newest of new technologies to their firesides? What did they make of radio and how did it change family life?

Join us as an ensemble of actors and musicians attempt to recreate this key cultural moment. Actors will perform extracts from two unpublished notebooks, recently uncovered by Listen In exhibition curator Beaty Rubens in the Bodleian archives. These contain some of the earliest ever listener research: lively, personal interviews conducted for the BBC by the artist and social reformer Winifred Gill in a working-class area of Bristol.

Composer Emily Levy will provide a specially commissioned score, integrating rare early BBC archive and performed live by two musicians.

This one-off event – including the responses of the audience in Blackwell Hall at the Weston Library – will be recorded and produced by Just Radio and broadcast on BBC Radio Three on Sunday 2 March 2025.