Sydney needs to listen more

HOW OFTEN do you listen to the radio with other people?

For the most part radio is consumed individually and this is a great and suitable thing for many reasons however I really don’t think it should be limited to that. There’s a lot that can be achieved from a bunch of strangers coming together and listening with the lights out, it’s like when you go to the movies and everyone laughs so you laugh too – it’s a different experience. It also promotes the discussion of radio; I bet the first thing you say afterwards is probably, “What did you think of that?” Any discussion about radio is a good discussion.

In the Dark is a volunteer run family (of sorts) who organise community listening events in different places all over Sydney. It might be hard to imagine but people come together in a space (like a pub, a church or a gallery) turn the lights off and listen to radio features, documentaries, soundscapes or any other ear thanking audio piece. A person or group of people who love listening usually curate the night.

In the same way as convicts, scones and cricket the idea was imported from the UK. There are quite a few similar listening-event-organisations around so maybe it was just a subconscious motherland thing. At any rate Sydney needed to listen more and it made sense to link in with an existing entity and In the Dark was the most environmentally friendly.

It was a lady named Nina Garthwaite who founded In the Dark and was open to the idea of franchising it to Australia. Nina hooked in with a lot of radio makers in London and over time built up the name – like most good scone recipes, word spread. Nearly every In the Dark sells out over there now and with the money raised they’re able to fly in curators from other parts of Europe as well as commission creative audio pieces by people from around the globe. Here in Sydney it’s a bit different; we’ve only been going since June this year so we’re still working out the possibilities and trying to get people involved. The scone scene over there (UK and Europe in general) is a lot bigger and very different to Sydney but the values and goals are still the same.

In a compressed MP3 file: In the Dark aims to promote listening for pleasure, the medium of radio features and the talented storytellers who make them.

Promoting the medium is a big chunk of what we hope to achieve and we particularly want to back the people who back creative audio and storytelling; 2ser 107.3; ABC Radio National and FBi 94.5. Surprisingly these organisations don’t get together a lot so to have them working together is really cool. It’s even better if through In the Dark they can get a conversation going between themselves about collaboration and common goals. Sometimes we can be so focused on what we’re doing we forget to look sideways and see someone else working towards the same thing. In the Dark gives radio-makers the opportunity to be in the same room, listen, eat muffins and maybe connect. But the benefits are mutual, these stations help promote events on air, online and in person as volunteers. A great example of this is the person collecting the money on the door when you walk in is usually the Executive Producer of Radio National’s flagship features show, 360documentaries.

In the Dark loves to collaborate and working with other groups outside of radio is something we hope to do more of – the Papermill residency is just one example of how In the Dark can work with artists from broader backgrounds. It’s interesting; people are starting to come to us now with ideas and possibilities. We’re a genuine community project so if you have an idea you should get in touch, especially if it involves collaborating. Maybe it’s just from messing around with audio for a while but I’ve genuinely started to think your biggest limitation is the extent of your ideas. Stay tuned for In the Dark in a hot air balloon.

There are some people that come down and have never heard a radio feature before and that’s OK! If In the Dark can give someone that experience for the first time then that’s awesome. If we could inspire someone to subscribe to a podcast, wikipedia the history of a radio station or tune into a radio show rather than flick on that U2 album they’ve heard a million times then we’ve achieved our goal (particularly if it’s a U2 album).

In the Dark events are just an ‘in’ to a whole world of audio stories, ideas and listening.