Posts categorized “London”

The Reunion – Tate Modern

tate-modern

The last BBC programme I worked on before moving to Canada has finally been broadcast! It’s an episode of the long-running, award-winning Radio 4 series The Reunion, which reunites a group of people intimately involved in a moment of modern history – which in this edition is the opening of Tate Modern, Britain’s first national museum of modern art. I started researching and assembling the archive materials for this Reunion way back in 2014, so it was a real pleasure to hear some of those clips again in the finished programme. But my favourite moment came during one of the group discussions, when Tate Director Nick Serota recalled the Queen’s question to him on entering the Rothko Room for the first time: “Is this man into Zen?”

Little Bookniks Podcast

I produced a 5-minute podcast documenting the ‘Little Bookniks’ children’s literary event at the Jewish Museum in March. You can hear that, and many other recordings from the day, here.

Inspired by Audio

I produced the second edition of the Inspired by Audio Podcast,  a collection of creative radio from around the world, curated by the radio collective In The Dark, with support from D&AD and RAB. My episode, ‘Inside My Head’, features stories from WNYC’s Pejk Malinovski, The Truth’s Jonathan Mitchell and RTE’s Ronan Kelly. You can hear it, right at the bottom of the page and on the right, here.

Recent Tape-Syncs

Over the past 6 months I’ve recorded four tape-syncs/simul-recs/double-enders/whatever-you-call-ems for two radio programmes in the US.

For America’s Test Kitchen, I recorded an interview with Mrs Patmore (aka the delightful Lesley Nichol) from Downtown Abbey. The interview with Lesley starts at about 26’30” and you can hear it here. Also for America’s Test Kitchen, I travelled to Cambridge to record an interview with food writer and Sunday Telegraph columnist Bee Wilson. The interview with Bee begins at about 20’05” and you can hear it here.

And for WUNC’s The Story, I recorded an interview with David Cundall, the British farmer digging for WWII planes in Burma. You can hear that story here. Also for The Story, I recorded an interview with the writer and campaigner Victoria Brittain, about her book ‘Shadow Lives’. You can hear that interview here.

Chinatown Food Tour in new guide to multicultural London

My Chinatown Food Tour is featured in a new e-book, ‘Kiratiana’s Travel Guide to Multicultural London’, by American writer and journalist Kiratiana Freelon. Kiratiana found me via Google and a few months ago we sat down to an epic Skype conversation, some of which you can read in this blog post; my deepest thanks to Kiratiana for including me in her book.

If you’d like a food tour of London’s Chinatown, please email me at jessielevene AT gmail DOT com.

Recent and upcoming work on BBC Radio 4

With my Radio MA complete I have now entered the (slightly scary) world of freelancing.

To kick things off, in September I recorded a simul-rec with writer, journalist and all-round nice person Caitlin Moran for weekly BBC Radio 4 programme Feedback, made by Whistledown Productions. The episode that my simul-rec was used in is unfortunately no longer available to listen to online, but I was told by the programme’s Executive Producer that, and I quote, “it’s the best recorded simul-rec that I’ve heard in 20 years” !

And as if that wasn’t enough excitement for one month, I also recently produced a feature for the second series of Short Cuts, the fabulous programme of creative radio documentaries made by Falling Tree Productions for BBC Radio 4. Back in January when I was still a student I was lucky enough to have my work featured in the first series of Short Cuts; my piece for the new series is an interview with a woman who gave her daughter the surname ‘Wild’, and will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 at 3pm on Tuesday 2nd October.

World Brunch Club on Monocle 24

World Brunch Club, the pop-up restaurant co-chefed by myself and Francesca Ter-Berg, was featured recently on The Menu, the weekly food show from internet radio station Monocle 24. Our slot in in Episode 39, starts at 32’10”, and you can find it here.

Making Contact – ‘The Olympic Games: Who Wins?’

For the latest edition of US-based radio programme Making Contact, I produced a segment about the policing of London 2012. Featuring the voices of playwright Dominic Taylor, Newham Monitoring Project‘s Estelle du Boulay and many others, you can hear it as part of the whole programme, or listen to the segment individually via Soundcloud.

Madeleine Moments

This is the 15-minute feature that I produced for the Creative Radio strand of my MA programme at Goldsmiths College, University of London.

Marcel Proust’s novel ‘In Search of Lost Time’ famously describes a universal experience – that involuntary rush of memory when we eat or drink a certain thing. For the narrator of that novel it was a Madeleine cake, and in this documentary we hear from a psychologist, a food writer and two young women as they explore the phenomenon of the Madeleine Moment.

Many thanks to Hatt Reiss, Sarah Giaziri, Simon Parkes and John Morton for talking to me about food, memory and everything in between.

From Chengdu to Brixton…

Blue plaque at 87 Hackford Road, Brixton

My article for the online magazine GoChengdoo about the sale of Vincent Van Gogh’s onetime London home to a Sichuanese businessman can be read here.