Radio Neighbourhood is a social innovation project transforming British open spaces into grounds for addressing migration and human rights issues through live art.

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Conceived during the pandemic, when the East and Southeast Asian (ESEA) community was under constant verbal and physical attack, a team of ESEA creatives initiated this public performance to tell stories about cross-cultural interactions and engage with post-humanist thinking. 

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The transdisciplinary project is a brave experiment on collisions of dance styles and audio drama incorporating storytelling with a taste of ESEA aesthetics. 

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Radio Neighbourhood is a placemaking idea using an artistic approach to reimagine public spaces. It builds strong bonds between people and places by paying attention to communities and integrating different opinions into a cohesive vision through storytelling. It explores the psychological impact of the pandemic and socio-political instabilities. Considering the rise of hate crimes against Asians, as is evidenced by Covid-19, the work in particular deals with issues of identity related to ethnicity and culture, and confronts the historical portrayal of those racialised and gendered bodies.

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Not only the project creates jobs for ESEA freelance artists in the (post)-pandemic, but also brings people of different social classes and cultural backgrounds together as a public space performance. We see housewives and businessmen standing side by side watching the performers dancing to a dialogue between an alien and a migrant. The story engages with ancient East Asian mythology and conveys cultural significance relating to issues of belief and identity, transcending cultural backgrounds and different communities.