There is nothing I love more than a good radio interview. For me, there is an intimacy in radio that other mediums can’t quite grasp. We can be swept away by radio when we are truly tuned into the speakers’ voices and stories. Radio is more than just background noise while you do the washing up; it has the power to transform and inspire us allowing us to use our own devices to come up with the images which seep into our ear drums.
I have always been a fan of the culture interview genre on the radio from Fresh Air on National Public Radio in the states to the BBC’s Front Row. The hosts are able to bring out the vulnerability we long to hear from the creative people who delight us with their films, art, plays, comedies and other art forms . We want to hear about the fumbles, the backstory and the challenges they may have faced while making their masterpieces. We all want the inside scoop and when you can just hear a person’s voice the experience becomes much more personal.
However, these well-produced and heavily funded broadcasts do not tell the whole story of what is happening on the culture scene today. I suppose one could say that they hardly scratch the surface. At times you may hear the same director interviewed in the same week across a number of shows on different stations and THIS is exactly why I wanted to create the Culture Show for East London Radio. I have been involved in the independent culture scene for a while and it seemed to me that there needed to be a space for less mainstream artists to be interviewed about what THEY are up to. To let them have the mic so they could talk about their own creative journeys. On the culture show, I have listened to playwrights talk about what inspired them to write their debut for a local fringe theatre, an indie film-maker laugh nervously as she explained the difficulties of getting funding or the woman who started her own company to train young people fresh out of care homes to act and write their own plays. Their passion is pure and continues to inspire me!
Community radio can reach places that the bigger radio conglomerates can’t. 
It can support fringe arts festivals popping up in our neighbourhoods like the Leytonstone Arts festival with whom ELR is a media partner and up and coming directors at the start of their careers like the young people behind the Cutting East film festival in Tower Hamlets.
Hyperlocal sites and platforms in the digital age are what local newspapers were at the turn of the century. In these times everything is moving so fast and it can feel overwhelming to try and keep up! However when we slow down and see what is happening right in our own neighbourhoods it can give us a sense of community and help us reconnect to the here and now! Documenting the smaller cultural movements happening in a city like London is an absolute honour and we at East London Radio shall continue to do so with great enthusiasm and heart (we just hope you’re listening!).
