15 Apr 2024
In 1974, a couple (Ray and Meg Bousfield) living in Beechwood Avenue decided to help a neighbour who was frustrated by the fact that his sight loss left him unable to keep up with what was happening in his local community by reading the local newspaper. So they decided to record the news stories onto their reel-to-reel tape recorder and carry it across to him.
Within a few years, they were joined by other local people, including the late actor Philip Madoc and various BBC reporters and news readers – sending a cassette tape on local news and features to every local visually impaired person that could be contacted. Thus began St Albans & District Talking Newspaper – a concept now to be found throughout the UK through more than 400 other local TNs.
From the outset, Ray and his colleagues created a broad range of content in these weekly audio programmes, including interviews with local politicians and visiting entertainers.
One highlight for Ray was being invited into the City Hall dressing room by Eric and Ernie – a moment captured by local photographer Tony Gregory. As a Harpenden resident, Eric Morecambe was particularly supportive of the efforts by the local Talking Newspaper.
Over the past 50 years, much has changed – not least the move to digital and posting of the weekly audio programmes on SADTN’s own website (sadtn.org.uk), on the BWBF mobile app and on Alexa, while continuing to provide them free of any charge to listeners across the city, town and villages within and nearby the district, What remains is the continuing effort to contact every potential listener to offer this free service and the determination of the volunteers to help those listeners to be fully informed of all that is happening in their local area, through news, interviews, discussions, audiobook reviews and more.
SADTN has been recognised in recent years with a number of honours: 2019 brought the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service (QAVS) and the Mayor’s Special Recognition Award.
During the pandemic, the Lord Lieutenant of Hertfordshire awarded the charity his ‘Heroes of Hertfordshire’ for continuing its weekly service despite the enforced closure of its recording studio and finding other ways to alleviate the additional risk of loneliness for those living alone. The switch to working from home by its readers, editors, producers and the rest of the team has helped to move the charity forward yet again in its creative production of informative and entertaining audio programmes. We now operate a hybrid process!
After reading about Write Now, SADTN Chair Rob Pearman immediately asked to be a sponsor.
“This is a great way to encourage young people to think creatively about their local and wider environment, and we wanted to support it from the outset. As a communication channel for people whose access to text-based media is necessarily limited by sight loss, we rely on investigative, creative and well-written journalism. This fantastic project offers so much potential value to all the young people who get involved.
“We want to add even more by inviting the writers of the winning entries – or as many as the judges think would be best – to come into our St Albans studio to record their work.
“We will include them all in our own programmes and enable Matt and his team to include them in their own website, social media or wherever. We will also be able – subject to consent by these new journalists – to offer their recordings right across the UK through our TN network.
“And who knows what that might lead to!
“We have nominated our newest programme maker to be on the judging team. Marley Bryan has had a long and successful career in broadcast television production, where she has worked alongside writers and directors mainly on documentary programmes.”
Find out more about Write Now here: https://stalbanstimes.co.uk/category/write-now/
