Radio 4 and Artangel: working together to inspire art

BBC Radio 4 and Artangel have recently collaborated and invited emerging British artists to pitch ideas for creative endeavours which explore the potential of space in bold and surprising ways. Some of their work will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Tony Phillips explains the thinking behind the collaboration.

As Commissioning Editor for Arts programmes at Radio 4, I help shape the sorts of arts and culture programmes we have on Radio 4.

That includes what we call 'strands' - programmes like The Film Programme, Open Book, Poetry Please and A Good Read. In addition to that I also commission about 200 arts documentaries a year. My role is commissioning programmes which help tell a story about the arts and creativity in Britain.

It's a varied story, but it was a story that changed a couple of years ago when the Radio 4 Controller Gwyneth Williams and I took a decision when we looked across a lot of programming and looked at arts programmes in particular. We felt that there wasn’t enough of the voice and the role of the artist in our output. Gwyneth made a statement of intent that she wanted Radio 4 to become a playground for artists. A place where artists could come and put themselves centre stage in the various telling of stories. Traditionally we would filter their views through a commentator or critic. We wanted to flip that and give the artist the opportunity to be centre stage - to explore things that they wanted to explore.

The end result is a change of tone. Traditional programmes like Front Row is where you'd find the critics or commentators, and they have a really important role to play on the network. You could argue that if those same commentators came on to make features and documentaries that there would be a certain amount of repetition. By using artists you create a more creative space and you change the angle by getting the perspective from the artist rather than the commentator. The result is a real tonal shift. You'll get a different insight from an artist sharing a personal perspective on the art. There is a different association with the art as a result.

The partnership between Radio 4 and Artangel came about because I had seen quite a lot of Artangel's work over the past decade. I knew that they were very successful and very influential commissioners of public art. There was a particular site-specific commission - A Room For London - where a house was designed and built on top of the Hayward Gallery. Part of the arrangement was that writers would be invited to spend time in the boat and have their work published. It got me thinking that maybe there was an opportunity for us to work together with Artangel and produce work for radio. I think there might be something in this, that there might be something worth pursuing. Artangel explained to me that they offered 'open commissions' every two years or so. They explained they were keen to work with Radio 4 and made there were opportunities for artists to come up with really exciting ideas. What we knew we would get with this was some association with the encouragement of public art in this country and the exciting prospect of commissioning art from sometimes unknown artists.

The fact that Radio 4 has been a partner has served as a point of intrigue for artists who have applied as part of the commissioning process. That wasn't a requirement though. But the happy the outcome is that two of the pieces would work very well on radio and one or two of them will definitely yield a supporting documentary explaining what it is or how it was made. There will be a life for these pieces of art on Radio 4.

The first piece you'll hear this month is a piece that is set in Portland, Dorset. A piece by an artist called Katrina Palmer. She has based herself for somewhere in the region of three to five months on an island off the Jurassic coast and she's telling a number of stories in and around the Dorset coastline, a coastline that dominates the location. Her interest was in the history of these quarries and the stories which exist around them. Her real fascination is about what was left behind when the stone was taken away, a kind of meditation on loss in the form of an audio walk for people visiting the location. What we'll hear on radio is a haunting tale of two sisters living on the island - The Quarryman's Daughters - late at night on Radio 4.

The notion of being surprised and transported into other areas and into other lives by other people. There's nothing quite like being interested in an idea and then being transported into a life. I think that's what radio does for me and what it does every single day for me. I like being taken on journeys and that's what radio does everyday.

Tony Phillips is Commissioning Editor, Arts, BBC Radio 4

• The Quarryman's Daughters is broadcast on BBC Radio 4 at 11.00pm on Tuesday 5 May 2015.
• Find out more about The Quarryman's Daughters on the Media Centre website.
• Read Miranda Sawyer's interview with artist Katrina Palmer on the Guardian website.