Radio Ballads

Radio Ballads: Songs for Change takes its name from a groundbreaking series of BBC radio programs broadcast between 1957 and 1964—a time of profound social transformation across the UK. These original Ballads combined song, sound, and storytelling to bring the lives of workers and underrepresented communities into public earshot, challenging mainstream narratives and giving voice to those rarely heard.

More than sixty years later, this publication extends that legacy. Developed through the Serpentine Civic Projects in London, Radio Ballads documents the commissioning of four contemporary works by artists Sonia Boyce, Helen Cammock, Rory Pilgrim, and Ilona Sagar. Created in long-term collaboration with carers, organizers, social workers, and residents in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham (2019–23), these new Ballads emerge from the lived experiences of those who sustain civic life—often invisibly—through networks of care, resilience, and mutual support.

At the heart of the book are eight conceptual “songs”: Working In and Against Systems, Listening, Processing, Embodying, Dreaming, Supporting, Connecting, and Voicing. These threads weave together complex, intimate stories of navigating health and care infrastructures, domestic violence, terminal illness, grief, and end-of-life experiences. Together, they reflect on how creative collaboration can open spaces for collective healing and critical resistance.

Radio Ballads invites us to listen differently—to imagine new ways of gathering, organizing, and creating solidarity. In a time of fragmentation and crisis, it asks: what kinds of collective songs do we need now?