Serpentine Civic Projects presents a new publication: Radio Ballads: Songs for Change (K. Verlag & Serpentine Gallery, 2025).
If you're in London: Join in for a day of readings and music to celebrate the launch of Radio Ballads: Songs for Change, a book by Serpentine Civic Projects.
The book takes inspiration from the revolutionary Radio Ballads series that were broadcast on the BBC from 1957–64, a time of rapid change across the UK. Combining song, music and sound effects with the voices and stories of communities, each original Ballad focused on the lived experiences of workers and groups whose voices were rarely, or never, heard in the media. Over sixty years later, Radio Ballads: Songs for Change, builds on these histories of collective song and storytelling. The publication shares the process of creating four new Radio Ballads (2019–23), with artists Sonia Boyce, Helen Cammock, Rory Pilgrim and Ilona Sagar in collaboration with carers, organisers, social workers and residents in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham.
Radio Ballads: Songs for Change centres the voices and experiences of people whose care keeps many of us afloat through civic, grassroots and informal networks. Sharing complex and intimate stories of living and working through multiple ongoing crises, these four projects are woven together by eight songs for collaborative work: Working In and Against Systems, Listening, Processing, Embodying, Dreaming, Supporting, Connecting, and Voicing. Together they consider how creative collaboration can open up new spaces to process experiences of mind/body health, domestic abuse, terminal illness, grief, and end of life care. Radio Ballads: Songs for Change looks at how we can generate interdependence through collective healing. Exploring new possibilities for us to gather and organise together, it asks: what kinds of collective songs are needed today?
Radio Ballads: Songs for Change is co-edited by Layla Gatens, Elizabeth Graham, and Amal Khalaf, with design by Elisabeth Klement, and published jointly by Serpentine Gallery and K. Verlag.
Programme
11:00 – 11:15
Guests arrive/ refreshments
11:15 – 11:30
Welcome with Layla Gatens, Lizzie Graham, Amal Khalaf and Elisabeth Klement
11:30 – 11:45
Visioning with Carina Murray
11:45 – 12:15 Songs for Listening
this messy song is ours, a reading by Sanah Ahsan
On Listening—five thoughts, a reading by Gail Lewis
12:15 – 12:45 Songs for Connecting
The Body Blow, Ilona Sagar and Cally Islam in conversation
In My Hands, a reading by Yvonne Miah
12:45 – 13:45 Lunch from Humdum and Company Drinks
13:50 – 14:30 Songs for Voicing
Bass Notes and SiteLines, a reading by Helen Cammock
Listening in Your Silence, a vinyl song by Helen Cammock, LBBD Pause and Adult Social Care Services
A Letter from a Pause Practitioner, a reading by Sarah Boosey
14:30 – 15:00 Songs for Dreaming
Amazing Purse, a song by Rory Pilgrim and Robyn Haddon
Rafts of My Mind, a reading and song by Rory Pilgrim and Catherine Rowland, sung by Robyn Haddon
Flowers, a song by Kayden Fearon and Rory Pilgrim
15:00
Closing
Contributors
Sanah Ahsan, Breanna Amoako, Ain Bailey, Camille Barton, Melissa Bell, Sarah Boosey, Sonia Boyce, adrienne maree brown, Clara Catherine Buffong, Sarah Kemper Cook, Susan Cade, Helen Cammock, Ruth Crossley, Jemma Desai, Yasmine Djedje-Fisher-Azoume, Joan Fletcher, Kayden Fearon, Layla Gatens, Elizabeth Graham, Jacob Heiter, Staci K Haines, Robyn Haddon, Ruby Harris, Rachel Hughes, Cally Islam, Priya Jay, Amal Khalaf, Tina Longston, Rae Johnson, Mark Jones, Isobel Lovett, Claire Martin, Rome Martin-Whilby, Geoffrey McCauley, Emily Catherine McGuinness Khoury, Meenadchi, Richard Meeran, Aisha Mirza, Yvonne Miah, Liam O’Connell, John O’Donohue, Joe Namy, Sofia Niazi, Eddie Pagget, Dee Pessoa, Sioned Pennant, Rory Pilgrim, Amelia Poamz, Hugh Prior, Petra Prince, Jim Reynolds, Frances Rifkin, Catherina Amber Rowland, Ilona Sagar, Georgia Scotland, Layli Long Soldier, Marijke Steedman, Sadie St Hilaire, Marged Siôn, Becky Warnock, Jackie Wang, Lorna Webster, Tom White, and Jasmine Vyolet.
Contributing Partners
Barking Dagenham Youth Dance, Barking and Dagenham Domestic Abuse Commission, Becontree Broadcast Station, Clean Break, Green Shoes Arts, Hodge Jones and Allen Solicitors, Interfaith Sanctuary Shelter, Implicated Theatre, LBBD Disability and Life Planning Services, LBBD Temporary Accommodation and Hostel Services, LBBD Integrated Care, LBBD Pause, Leigh Day Solicitors, London Asbestos Awareness Group, London Contemporary Orchestra, New Town Culture, PEARL, Radio Active, Social, Therapeutic and Community Studies (Goldsmiths University, Unite the Hotel Workers Branch.
More information on the event at: serpentinegalleries.org/whats-on/radio-ballads-songs-for-change-book-launch