The studio was a bit busy yesterday because we were hosting the first ever live show by @FemFMFutures, a group of young girls who had been through a training course aimed at boosting the number of women in radio. They did a great job. You can listen to their show here.

We’d planned to follow that up with an hour-long discussion of the role of women in radio, but Harriet Robinson, who was one of our guests for that, had been involved in the training and needed a bit of debrief time with her crew. To give her time, Judeline and I filled in for half an hour.

I did actually have quite a few things to mention, including Gareth L. Powell’s BSFA win, and meeting Karen Lord in Finland. The main thing I want to draw to your attention, however, is this petition aimed at saving two young people being threatened with deportation by the UK Immigration authorities. Their parents have been given leave to stay, but because they are over 18 Ahad and Anum Rizvi have been assessed separately and told to go. They have no family back in Pakistan as their entire extended family has fled the country due to religious persecution. The fight to keep them here is being led by Easton Cowboys, the local cricket club that Ahad plays for.

We filled in the rest of the half hour with a discussion of friendship and what it means in these days of social media. I wish I had been to the Pelican Books event (of which more in a later post) before we did this, because some of the discussion there was very relevant. Humans do badly on their own, and it is an open question as to whether online “friends” can fill the gap left by evaporating local communities.

The second half hour was the planned Women & Radio discussion, for which I was delighted to welcome Harriet Robinson & Mary Milton into the studio. They both have a lot of experience with BCFM (Bristol’s other community station) and the BBC.

You can listen to the first hour here.

The second hour was devoted to a new, community-led exhibition in the M-Shed. I think the best way to describe it to you folks (an idea I came up with during the show) is that it is Long Hidden for the current Bristol community. That is, the museum is looking to highlight the work of amazing people from marginalized groups in the local community. Unusually, it has reached out to those communities for the material. Many thanks to Karen, Ric, Alex & Remi for a great discussion.

You can listen to the second hour here.

The playlist for the show featured mainly songs to do with radio in the first hour, and songs by people with a connection to Bristol in the second hour. I also played a song especially for our young trainees. Here’s the full list:

• Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves – The Eurythmics
• On My Radio – Selecter
• Radio Silence – Thomas Dolby
• Bristol Rock – Black Roots
• Stranger on the Shore – Acker Bilk
• The Riddle – Nik Kershaw
• Overcome – Tricky