The police tell us they are here to protect us. But what if their original purpose was something else altogether? Peabody Award-winning host Chenjerai Kumanyika takes listeners on a journey to uncover the hidden history of the largest police force in the world – from its roots in slavery, to rival police gangs battling across the city, to everyday people who resisted every step of the way. As our society debates where policing is going, Empire City: The Untold Origin Story of the NYPD explores where the police came from.

From Wondery, Crooked Media and PushBlack.

An interactive Augmented Reality (AR) story for your phone, Ghosts of Solid Air takes you into a world of radical voices and shadows.

On a journey from Trafalgar Square to the Houses of Parliament, you speak and the ghosts speak back, pressing through an invisible membrane with messages for you.

Through an encounter with those who have been pushed beyond their tipping point – this experience asks: where does disobedience come from?

Walk with the ghosts – and decide for yourself.

A collection of 10 stories about the life and legacy of artist and sculptor, Barbara Hepworth

Listen to the Museum Story Player HERE

Welcome to Wandering. A four part series of immersive podcast gallery walks, brought to you by Shade Podcast and Axel Kacoutié.

Sponsored by Bloomberg Connects.

Interludes: Black Balloons is a new sound installation by Shade Podcast and Axel Kacoutié now showing at Tate Gallery. Responding to Liz Johnson Artur’s display Time don’t run here, the piece references Artur’s Black Lives Matter protest images and works from her ongoing Black Balloon Archive documenting people in Africa, and of the African and Caribbean diasporas.

Experience Liz Johnson Artur’s work with the ear and body. How does sound change how you see the works? What pulses through you when you see the images, braille and thread?

The soundscape features the voices of Liz Johnson Artur, artists Imogen Faires and Jamel Alatise from Theatre Peckham, and Research and Interpretation Artist Resident, Marie Smith. It includes extracts from Poetry as Protest, Protest as Poetry, a poem by Faires and Alatise responding to the display and performed live at Tate Modern in April 2023.

Visit the installation at Tate Modern, Natalie Bell Building, Level 2 West Room 4, Artist and Society. Black Balloons will play in the gallery at the following times: 11.00am, 12.00pm, 1.00pm, 3.00pm, 4.00pm, 5.00pm.

Interludes is an ongoing sound collaboration between Lou Mensah of Shade Podcast and the audio artist Axel Kacoutié.

Produced by Lou Mensah

Created by Axel Kacoutié

It’s not always in a romantic relationship where a heart can break.

How do we grieve in a culture that champions one love over the rest?

Axel Kacoutié attempts to language loss after reuniting with the person who inspired this documentary. Guided by the thoughts and wisdom of friends and an end-of-life practitioner, we hear what happens when we let grief speak.

Featuring the voices of Claire Galligan, Ivor Williams, JN Benjamin, Tej Adeleye, Weyland McKenzie-Witter and Zachary Cayenne-Elliott.

Special thanks to End of Life Doula UK, Tony Phillips, Natasha McAnea-Hill, Jeff Monteen and Maz Ebtehaj

Artwork: Erin Tse
Development Producer: Eleanor McDowall
Sound Design, Music and Mixing Production: Axel Kacoutié
Produced by Axel Kacoutié

A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4

“Somewhere between the narrow entry of Who I am and What I seem to be, lies a vast and nameless place.”

In this transmission, Axel Kacoutié discovers a new sense of self in the cosmologies, concepts and realities of queer and indigenous folks. What are the links between gender expression and our relationship with the Earth? How does it destabilise colonial and capitalist imaginations of what we’re told a gender binary is meant to be?

Featuring the voices of:
Opaskwayak Cree Nation Professor at the University of Saskatchewan, Dr Alex Wilson
Artist Buitumelo Kotekwa
Afro-Taino Two-Spirit change-maker Cleopatra Tatabele
Scholar and Research Assistant Karyn De Freitas
Transmasculine, non-binary scholar and Founder of the Free Black University, Melz Owusu.

Artwork by Erin Tse

Development Producer: Eleanor McDowall
Assistant Producer: CA Davis
Additional Recording: Heidi Chang and Israel Ramjohn
Sound Design, Music and Mixing Production: Axel Kacoutié
Produced by Axel Kacoutié
A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4

All the Names Given as it’s meant to be heard, narrated by Raymond Antrobus

Throughout, the audiobook is punctuated with [Caption Poems] partially inspired by deaf sound artist Christine Sun Kim, which attempt to fill in the silences and transitions between the poems, as well as moments inside and outside of them. Direct, open, formally sophisticated, All the Names Given breaks new ground both in form and content: the result is a timely, humane and tender book from one of the most important young poets of his generation.

©2021 Raymond Antrobus (P)2021 Macmillan Publishers International Limited

Original Music by: Axel Kacoutié

Produced by: Eleanor McDowall

Mixed by: Eloise Whitmore

Interludes is a collaboration between Shade Podcast and Axel Kacoutié featuring six contemporary artists: Amy Sherald, Ming Smith, Phoebe Boswell, Rahima Gambo, Nnena Kalu and Cassi Namoda.

Framed by the question “What does healing sound like?”, these podcasts offer a visceral connection with the artists’ work. In each episode we weave the artists’ reflections through Axel’s original soundscapes, as a collaborative exploration of their creative experience.

Interludes opens an alternative space. The aim is to soften our tendency to intellectualise artwork, and instead create a sonic texture that is more intimate in its connection with the artist.

Concept & Production by Lou Mensah
Created by Axel Kacoutié

Supported by Hauser & Wirth
Artwork by Erin Tse
Animated by Luke Dye-Montefiore

Supported by Frieze Membership

Written in collaboration with Ioana Selaru. An Afonica Sound production for BBC Radio 4

About: Alternative reality drama. Extended Life Syndrome (ELS) is a rare genetic condition that makes some people live twice as long. But would you want it? Now think again. Would you?

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