Listen In: How Radio Changed the Home

About the exhibition

Discover how radio changed home life when it was the newest of new technologies.

Drawing on a rich range of visual and aural material, this exhibition explores the hype and reality of the early years of radio.

Focussing on the first two decades of radio, the exhibition charts big changes – such as radio's impact on family dynamics – to everyday concerns about its influence on dinnertime conversation. All brought to life with newly uncovered first-hand accounts, giving a voice to the listeners who lived through this massive social and technological change.

Listen In and uncover how radio changed the home.

Exhibition book

Listen In: How Radio Changed the Home

Beaty Rubens
Available on 7 February 2025

Accompanying the exhibition, this book explores the impact of radio on a personal level through the experiences of those who were there before and during its circulation into the home. Generously illustrated and drawing on contemporary journalism, fiction, diaries, cartoons and a remarkable cache of unpublished first-person testimonies discovered in the Bodleian Library's archives, Listen In is packed with entertaining and thought-provoking stories.

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Curator

Beaty Rubens, former BBC radio producer, writer and Byrne Bussey Marconi Fellow 2023–24.

Acknowledgments

This exhibition is kindly supported by Dave Aylott, in memory of the actor and broadcaster Desmond Carrington