The new wave on radio arts in the UK

In the UK there has never been much scope for radio art within the ream of public service broadcasting, leading artists to seek funding for their own independent projects, predominantly from the Arts Council of England (ACE) and other state funding bodies and charitable trusts. In this article, I will consider this recent avenue of practice, because its results - in terms of audience composition, artistic output and the wider cultural context of the form - shed light on both the particular context of radio art practice in the UK, and also have implications for the wider struggle for sustainable independent media networks against the diminished imaginative horizons of a public broadcast culture endlessly inured to 'unavoidable' cuts and the free market enclosure of the digital commons. In the name of „austerity‟ such cuts have been inflicted upon broadcasters worldwide.The loss of key radio arts programmes like Australia's ABC's Listening Room, as discussed in the last post by Colin Black, is by no means the exception, even in an age of expansion in digital spaces. As De Lys stated way back in 2006 it may be considered "[i]ronic that the rationalization‟ of radio arts by public broadcasters occurs at the same time that audio arts activity and the creative use of sound are expanding exponentially in community spaces, in galleries, games, and online".