The Winners of 500 Words 2011

It's that time again. Thoughts at the Chris Evans Breakfast Show have turned to all things literary. We've inked our quills and gathered our most eloquent thoughts in preparation for today, where we've launched 500 WORDS - our short story writing competition for children aged thirteen and under.

Buoyed by the success of last year's inaugural event, we're attempting it all over again - only this time we want to make it much bigger and even better!

We have already secured a stellar panel of judges steeped in the art of children's literature: Dame Jacqueline Wilson, Charlie Higson, Lauren Child, Andy Stanton and David Walliams. Walliams and Wilson are returning judges from last year, because they were so blown away by the range and creativity of the young authorial talent on display.

David Walliams will be joining Chris live in the studio on Friday as the climax to our launch week - last year he let slip that he'd be swimming the Thames for Sport Relief, for his sake we hope there's no similar revelation this year. Mr Evans also reprises his role as chair of judges after receiving glowing reviews for his performance last year from our independent adjudicator.

The original idea was born when Chris went to the Hay Festival in the Summer of 2010. Very pleasantly surprised by the inclusive family atmosphere that washed over him there, he decided he wanted to inspire the nation's kids to get writing. He also wanted the nation's teachers to get involved - acting as judges in our first round of adjudication. His production team promptly sprang into action.

Assistant Producer Day Macaskill and Radio 2 Interactive were faced with an epic conundrum - how to get hold of a piece of software that could not only accept every story submitted, but also keep personal information totally separate (in abidance with Child Protection regulations), then assign a totally random anonymised batch of stories to a teacher from a completely different geographical location to that of the children in their batch. It had never been done before.

We took expert advice from our colleagues at Blue Peter, who have been running similar competitions for children since the year dot; and Day and his able assistant Bethany Minelle hooked up with a very clever computer programmer called Pete Davison who designed us a bespoke monster of a database. Just as well really, as we were stunned to receive nearly 30,000 stories from children.

And with almost 2,000 teachers offering their marking services as well, we quickly realised we were going to have to employ several extra staff to deal with all aspects of processing the enormous beast this competition has become.

Then there was the small matter of an outside broadcast to organise - the Top 50 shortlisted authors were all invited with their families to the Hay Festival of Literature and the Arts, to watch a very special Radio 2 Breakfast Show go out live. Our judges had selected five finalists in each age category (9 and Under and 10-13), and an overall winner from each age range. Ten celebrities including the likes of Richard Hammond, Anne Robinson, Alex Jones and Alexandra Burke all made the trip to our little tent in a big field in the middle of Wales to read the winning stories aloud.

The atmosphere that morning was extraordinary.

Chris Evans described it as one of the most moving programmes he's ever been involved in - and the reaction the show received via text and email really did bear that out. We had truckers telling us they had pulled over at the side of the road in floods of tears, people unable to leave the house until they heard how a particular story concluded, and kids that were refusing to get out of the car at school, because they wanted to know which tale could possibly top the one they had just heard! It was a very different Radio 2 Breakfast Show that the nation woke up to that morning, but it was one we were all immensely proud to have been involved in.

So, to this year. We *think* we are in a much better state of preparedness for what may ensue over the next month (we close the competition on World Book Day - Thursday 1st March). This time around, every stage of the competition will be conducted completely online - including all the marking - so at least the printers at Western House can relax, even if no-one else can! And we have some juicy on air tie-ins with Newsround, Blue Peter, Radio 4 Extra and 6 Music to explore this time around as well.

To sum up, if you know someone aged thirteen or under who has a wicked and wild imagination, get them to check out the 500 WORDS website and have a bash at entering a story in our competition.

We know of 9 million people who can't wait to hear what they've got to say.

Helen Thomas is executive producer, BBC Radio 2

• Go to the 500 Words website to find out more, meet last year's winners and to enter.
• Read last year's top 50 entries including the winners.

Andrew Scott receives the Best Supporting Actor Award from June Whitfield

The winners of the first BBC Audio Drama Awards were announced by actor David Tennant at a special event in the Radio Theatre at BBC Broadcasting House.

The awards are a celebration of audio drama, on air and online, and are about giving recognition to the actors, writers, producers, sound designers, and others who work in the genre.

The winners of the BBC Audio Drama Awards are:

Best Audio Drama:
Lost Property - The Year My Mother Went Missing by Katie Hims
Producer: Jessica Dromgoole, BBC Radio Drama for Radio 4

Best Actor in an Audio Drama:
David Tennant, Kafka: The Musical by Murray Gold
Producer: Jeremy Mortimer, BBC Radio Drama for Radio 3

Best Actress in an Audio Drama:
Rosie Cavaliero, Lost Property: A Telegram From The Queen by Katie Hims
Producer: Jessica Dromgoole, BBC Radio Drama for Radio 4

Best Supporting Actor/Actress in an Audio Drama:
Andrew Scott, Referee by Nick Perry
Producer: Sasha Yevtushenko, BBC Radio Drama for Radio 4

Best Scripted Comedy Drama:
Floating by Hugh Hughes
Producer: James Robinson, BBC Radio Drama for Radio 4

Best Online Only Audio Drama:
Rock by Tim Fountain
Producer: Iain Mackness, Made in Manchester for The Independent Online

Best Adaptation:
The History of Titus Groan dramatised by Brian Sibley
Producers: David Hunter, Gemma Jenkins and Jeremy Mortimer, BBC Radio Drama for Radio 4

Best Use of Sound in an Audio Drama:
Bad Memories by Julian Simpson
Producer: Karen Rose, Sweet Talk Productions for Radio 4

Innovation Award:
The Unfortunates adapted by Graham White
Producer: Mary Peate, BBC Radio Drama for Radio 3

The winner of the Imison Award for Best Radio Drama Script broadcast in 2010 by a new writer is:
Amazing Grace by Michelle Lipton

The winner of the Tinniswood Award for Best Radio Drama Script broadcast in 2010 is:
Gerontius by Stephen Wyatt

You'll be able to hear some of the BBC shortlisted audio dramas again on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 4 Extra between Monday 30 January and Friday 10 February. Details to follow.

Paul Murphy is the editor of the Radio blog

• More about the Awards
• Read the full shortlist for the Awards

It's all very well making predictions for the most successful artists of 2012 in January, but with the Christmas break this was never going to be the easiest of tasks.

On the up side; interviewing up-and-coming artists about their careers so far, enjoying the passion, the energy and the excitement that they had made it into the annual list (without letting on where they'd come).

As Michael Kiwanuka exclaimed "Just to be given the nod and for people to want to listen to what you ramble on about in your room with your guitar is amazing". Managing to source video of a two-year-old Skrillex playing harmonica and some photos of Azealia Banks from her early days in youth theatre were also a definite highlight.

The only down side; days and days in a darkened room cutting down wise words and electrifying performances to just five or so minutes each.

Watch interviews and music from Michael Kiwanuka, Frank Ocean, Azealia Banks, Skrillex and Niki & The Dove and take inspiration that you can do the same.

Watch the film on the BBC Red Button until Thursday 12 January.

Tom Bedwell worked on the BBC Sound of 2012 Red Button programme

• BBC News: Michael Kiwanuka tops Sound of 2012 list
• Sound of 2012 website
• BBC Sound of 2012 Red Button programme

Starting today 'One Billion Downloads: A Selection Box' features a different presenter each day, introducing their favourite BBC podcast.

It's been just over a year since I joined the Audio Visual Team in Audio and Music Interactive and was given what I think of as one of the best jobs at the BBC - looking after the BBC's Podcast Service.

There are currently around 300 podcasts on the site, from Annie Mac's Mini Mix on Radio 1 to Graham Norton on Radio 2 and The Infinite Monkey Cage on Radio 4. We've been offering podcasts of many of our programmes since 2007. We know from our research that for many of you it's a great way to listen on the go.

It's been a year of celebrations and a few firsts for the team.

We released the Desert Island Discs archive and currently there are almost one thousand episodes of this classic available to download and keep. There was the first pan-BBC podcast marking the Royal Wedding, which pulled together all the best bits across BBC Radio in one daily podcast.

We've now have 15 million downloads a month in the UK and recently passed one billion downloads worldwide since we started.

According to industry body RAJAR 8.5 million adults in the UK have downloaded a podcast in 2011 compared to 4.3 million in 2007. This is good news for the industry as a whole as nearly a third of people who download podcasts listen to new radio programmes they hadn't previously heard as a result.

In order to celebrate this momentous milestone (apart from a group high-five in the office) we've decided to do what we do best and to make a podcast of it.

We love podcasts and so do lots of our presenters so we asked them to introduce you to their favourites through our new pop-up podcast: One Billion Downloads: A Selection Box.

Starting today One Billion Downloads: A Selection Box features a different presenter each day, introducing their favourite BBC podcast.

Kicking the whole thing off is the amazing Lauren Laverne from BBC 6 Music. Lauren has often tweeted and commented about her favourite podcasts so she was top of our list but which podcast did she pick? Download it and find out!

One Billion Downloads: A Selection Box will run for 5 days and all the programmes will be available for 7 days after that.

There are lots of big projects on the horizon for the podcast service, including another pan-BBC Radio podcast, celebrating the run-up to the Olympics in 2012 and bringing you the best coverage from all across BBC Radio all in one place.

Sami Qasem is a Content Producer for Audio Visual Services, BBC A&Mi

• Read BBC podcasts hit 1 billion downloads in the Telegraph
• Radio Today: BBC Radio celebrates billion downloads
• Broadcast: BBC Radio tops billion downloads
• BBC Media Centre: BBC Radio celebrates billionth download (with top ten charts for daily and weekly podcast downloads)

East Suffolk Morris men: Photo by JossSmithson, used under this licence

I don't remember when I saw my first Morris dance.

I think it was sometime in the early seventies. My mum was working, I wasn't yet at school, and I spent a lot of time with my grand-dad. He'd been, or maybe was still, a rep for Colman's, the Norfolk based mustard company, who had diversified into providing wine and spirits. I have memories, though they may have become semi-fictionalised, of accompanying him to rural events - hunts, fetes and festivals - in forgotten places between Birmingham and Norwich, when he was invited by virtue of some commercial connection with the booze supply.

I remember a fuzzy photograph of a brown corduroy, pre-school me with him, watching men in white on a patch of grass, leaping and dancing. I've looked for it but I can't find it. Maybe it never happened. But for me that was where the Morris was filed, for most of my life, in the seventies memories stash, in the past, something mysterious and beautiful and pastoral, and probably on the way out now, along with butterflies and wild flowers and birds that nest in hedgerows.

But, like some threatened species making a comeback, over the last decade I've noticed the Morris, and various mutated species of traditional English dance, staging a slight return.

At the folk-singer Martin Carthy's 60th birthday show in Oxford, ten years ago, a Morris troupe took the stage before a crowd of thousands, and again, when I saw the Carthy clan gathered at the Royal Albert Hall five year back.

A live art promoter in the village of Hovingham, on the Yorkshire moors, unexpectedly got Damian Barber's traditional dancers the Black Swan Rappers to open before one of my stand-up comedy shows in the mid-noughties, stunning an initially skeptical crowd with their violent and virile performance. This year I invited the folk rock band Trembling Bells to appear in a season of music and comedy I was curating at the South Bank center, and they brought with them the Belles Of London City, a new all-female Morris trio.

But my fondness for The Morris was sealed six years ago.

My wife and I were married in the Forest of Dean, in her native Gloucestershire. Searching for something significant and local, she had booked the Forest Of Dean Morris Men for the reception, attended by fifty or so people, in a musky woodland cellar. We'd been married in a church that morning.

My wife's a Catholic, and I am an atheist, but nonetheless I'll happily admit that the priest gave a great service, and the ritual elements added a real significance to the ceremony. That said, the service did represent for me a compromise I suppose, of the sort one must make in a marriage. I hadn't expected it, but the appearance of the Morris men that evening somehow squared the circle, and left me feeling that the old gods, too, had been paid their due.

The Forest Of Dean Morris Men came out of the black November night, all in white. They were accompanied by a "beast", in their particular case a man in the costume of a bright red stag, who excited all the young ladies, and intimidated the men.

I normally hate dancing, or being the centre of attention in any way, but I felt no shame as my new wife and I were made to skip in circles round the stone walled cellar, and between and beneath sudden arches made of the Morris men's human hands, while the beast looked on approvingly and clacked its wooden hooves, draped in adoring women, scowled at by their temporarily cuckolded partners.

It's no exaggeration to say that The Morris made our day, and in the dark times of exhaustion and 3am feeds, when the romance of your first meeting seems so far away, we reach back to the symbols we laid in store to give us strength at later dates, and I see the Morris once more.

That's why, when Radio 2 asked me to narrate It's Got Bells On, I couldn't say no. I am forever in the dance's debt.

Stewart Lee is a comedian

• It's Got Bells On airs on BBC Radio 2 at 10pm on Monday December 12th as part of the Dance Season
• Stewart Lee's current live show is Carpet Remnant World
• Stewart is also one of the guest editors this year for Radio 4's Today, and his programme will be on air on Saturday 31st December

Rosie Wainwright from the RPO joins the prison musicians onstage for their final performance

Walking into a prison for the first time is a nerve-wracking and intimidating experience. As each heavy door slams behind you, the sense of claustrophobia increases - even in open spaces there's netting overhead, and the barbed wire is clear to see.

In September 2011, I experienced that moment first hand, as I followed a group of inmates at the Mount Prison Hemel Hempstead who were taking part in a rehabilitative music programme with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

My image of prison before that moment had been created from film and TV programmes. Part Prisoner Cell Block H, part Porridge, part Miami Mega-Jail, I was expecting a dark Victorian warren with scarred inmates and embittered staff. What I encountered changed my perspective (and my life) completely.

Built in the 1980s The Mount's red-brick walkways and green open spaces made it feel more like a conference centre than a prison. Perfectly groomed flowerbeds fringe the path through the central quadrangle, and we were surprised to see ducks nesting in bushes. The prison buildings themselves felt (and smelled) like my old school - lino on the floor and that thick wipe-clean paint on the walls.

The project was to be based in one of The Mount's old workshops, where at one point prisoners had been employed to smash CDs, but which now was a large echoey open space with the feeling of a school gym.

Walking into that room for the first time I didn't know what to expect or who I would encounter. We'd been assured that all the participants had been screened in advance, but we hadn't been told who these men were or what they'd done.

I shouldn't have worried though. Within seconds, a friendly face had shaken my hand and offered a cup of tea. I was introduced around and at first had a job distinguishing between the project leaders and the inmates themselves. In some ways, the thing that surprised me most was how normal everyone was - nothing like the TV-fuelled image of an inmate I'd had before.

Over the 5 week period it was inspiring to watch the inmates overcome their own personal hurdles - one guy who had never picked up an instrument before and only spoke to us in mumbles, by the end of the project had learnt a bit of bass guitar, drums and knew a couple of tunes on the marimba. It was amazing to watch his confidence grow.

From a programme-making perspective, the challenge for myself and my assistant producer Ashley was to capture those breath-taking moments of personal development with sensitivity, but whilst making sure we could actually hear their words above the echoing din of the room.

Some of the stories were really difficult to hear - and every inmate we spoke to had a difficult story to tell. When I sat listening back to the audio we'd recorded, I frequently found myself in tears. Their honesty was incredibly moving. But the one thing they all had in common was that music had changed their lives.

Heather Davies is one of the Radio Academy's 30 Under 30 and also works on Sounds of the 20th Century for BBC Radio 2. Heather is @heatherrhian on Twitter.

• The Band Behind Bars is on Radio 2 on Monday 28 November at 10pm. You'll be able to hear it online shortly afterwards.
• Music in Prisons: The Irene Taylor Trust website
• Rideout (Creative Arts for Rehabilitation) website
• The RPO blog: A Bigger Sound - Week 1 and Week 2
• The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra website

Dame Nellie Melba, in Britain's first advertised public broadcast, gives a song recital from Marconi's works in Chelmsford.

Recently I was lucky enough to see a piece of radio history: the microphone into which Dame Nellie Melba, the formidable Australian soprano, sang a live recital on 15th June 1920.

She was in a makeshift studio in Marconi's Chelmsford factory and it was the first broadcast by a professional singer. Indeed, her dulcet tones were heard from Iran to Newfoundland. Looking at the primitive microphone, made from a telephone receiver and pieces of old cigar box , I was struck by the conflicting feelings that often characterise any examination of the radio's pioneering days.

One gets a sense that so much has changed, and so little. Of course, technology has moved beyond our imagination but the simple appeal of a human voice, transmitted live to a listener, remains undimmed.

Much has been written about the resilience of radio during a period when traditional media has been thrown into the realities of digital convergence.

The recent growth of listening has taken many by surprise as they thought that slow, inexorable decline was the only possible future. It is not overstating it to say that a few years ago the radio sector was suffering a crisis of confidence as it looked over the fence at its media neighbours and saw the explosive growth of internet services.

Also, the world began its obsession with new brighter, flashier screens: tablets, HDTVs, games consoles, smart phones and more. The industry became worried by its lack of scale and there were concerns that what radio had to offer may be dated or, at a minimum, viewed as dated. However, although the sector is not completely out of the woods (young listening and fragile commercial economics remain a challenge), the overall strength of radio is excellent with over 90% of people tuning in each week and growing listening hours.

In summary, it has proved that it can sustain itself in a world of infinite online choice and sharper, smarter screens. This is not only down to radio's innate strengths (e.g. mobile, live, personal) but also due to a number of other factors: the outstanding quality of programme makers who recognise that intelligent, human curation is actually of higher value in a confusing world; the strengthening of national commercial radio under new leadership; and the beginnings of serious digital innovation.

So radio has proved it can survive in a digital age but now can it hope for more? Could it actually convince itself and others that it can deliver continuing growth over the coming years?

It was a question that I posed at a recent session at the Radio Festival, our industry get-together in Manchester. Growth would attract more money into the commercial sector and drive listening as a whole, building new audiences and increasing money into programme making.

I have offered possible seed funding for ideas that could build radio as a whole and we are now assessing a number of ideas. As an example, on-demand or catch-up radio is still only less than 1% of all listening. We know that while much of our programming is best consumed live, we have attracted new listeners by driving people through the iPlayer or podcasts to find programmes after their first broadcast.

Certain programmes have achieved over 10% of their listening via catch-up and this is incremental. Imagine if we achieved that across radio. At the BBC, we are looking at a concept that we call the "audiopedia" which could dramatically increase our already successful archive of old programmes.

We have already had millions of people download episodes of programmes such as Desert Island Discs or In Our Time. Imagine if we could take this approach across much more of our output.

This is just one area to explore among many.

Perhaps you have other thoughts about how we can grow radio as a whole?

Tim Davie is Director of Audio & Music

• Read An Archive for the Future on the BBC Radio blog

The Science Explorer from BBC Radio 4

The Radio Festival which was held this week in Salford is the annual event where the Radio Industry gathers both to celebrate what we do and to look at where the Radio world is heading. In his keynote speech the BBC Director General Mark Thompson explained our plans to make a huge archive of speech radio available as part of our online Radio product.

The scale of the task is almost infinite. Our ambition is similarly big. Users should be able to find the highest quality BBC audio on any subject or about any person or place in which they are interested. They may go there out of commitment to a particular programme they know and love or they may find the audio via a search engine or another part of the BBC Website and be introduced to the riches of BBC Radio that they may never have encountered before. So my job along with others is to set some priorities and keep the ball rolling.

There is more to this than digging out a number of rather dusty old programmes and add an archive nostalgia corner to our website. As my former colleague Sue MacGregor reminds us in the Daily Telegraph today there are some gems that we must try to surface. However to focus only on these is to miss a bigger opportunity. The archive of speech radio must be of wide contemporary interest and will be at the very heart of our online offer. We must also ensure relevant programmes and extracts can be found easily by existing and new radio audiences.

We have already started the work. Over 20 hours of each week's Radio 4 output is added to the archive. We are also going back from the current schedule to build collections of the most relevant, useful, educational speech radio content that will supplement our current programming or agenda. Listeners inspired by Jim Al-Khalili's Life Scientific on Tuesday mornings can explore many more of the themes by listening to hundreds of archive programmes gathered in Radio 4's Science Explorer. Later this year a further 500 editions of Desert Island Discs going back to 1987 will be available as streams or downloads.

Radio 3's archive enables us to build a comprehensive audio guide to the world of classical music. We began with the Proms this summer where concert information was linked to relevant editions of Composer of the Week or Discovering Music. The site attracted record numbers of users. Look out for more of the same in the Symphony project which has started this week.

Radio 4's programme brands remain a significant point of entry to our sites and our content for many users. They are still a rich seam for us to mine. For example, we have presented archive items from Woman's Hour since the very beginning of the Radio 4 website. We know there is huge potential in that programmes' archive of encounters with a vast number of the great women of the last 60 years.

Archive underpins much of the wider BBC's online ambition so the radio archive will also be reached by journeys across the whole of BBC online. The content will also be a key element of future public service partnerships. All this will make radio bigger and more relevant than ever in the digital world. Making that archive portable via downloads that can be consumed on all devices is an essential requirement.

We know we are onto something exciting here from the way our archives are appreciated now. On air Radio 4 Extra has more listeners than any other BBC Digital only network and online there are more than 2 million requests every month for audio on demand. That is the second highest amount after Radio 4 itself. Only a month has past since we made the entire In Our Time archive available as downloads or podcasts and over 1 million editions have been downloaded. There have been over 5 million downloads of editions of Desert Island Discs since we launched the archive 5 months ago. The Reith Lecture Archive which goes back to 1948 has had almost a million downloads. There is lots more detail to come and I will keep you up to date on our progress here and on the BBC Radio 4 blog.

Andrew Caspari is Head of Speech Radio and Classical Music, Interactive

Margaret Evison with Jeremy Vine

I never thought I would sit at my desk with tears rolling down my cheeks.

My colleagues are now used to the sight of me sobbing and it's one guaranteed way to get them to make you a cup of tea. It still surprised me though the first time I saw Jeremy Vine wiping a tear from under his glasses.

It was Jeremy who came up with the idea for this special series for Remembrance week. Each programme features an interview with the mother of a fallen soldier in which she tells the story of his life and his death and shares the songs he loved to listen to.

The soundtrack is an eclectic mix from rock to rap to rave. There's a football chant, a soaring school hymn, a party anthem and a beautiful piece of classical cello. The music takes the mothers back to a particular time or place and the memories that emerge paint a picture of the son she lost.

As an army wife, I knew it would be an emotional rollercoaster as the subject is very close to home. I know how it feels to wait and to worry. I also know the feeling of complete joy when my husband walks through the door after six months away.

The five mothers we met never had that homecoming hug. Two of them felt fortunate to be able to hold their son's hand as he lay seriously wounded in a hospital bed in Birmingham but for the others their reunion was at RAF Lyneham when his coffin was carried from the plane.

These are some of the intensely personal moments the mothers shared when we visited them around the country. We were welcomed into family homes in Abergavenny, Caversham, Sheffield and Dulwich and greeted warmly on a windy day out at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire.

Jeremy Vine says it has been an incredible privilege to spend time with the mothers:

"I have never in my entire career recorded interviews which have been so powerful and so moving. Sons who were only boys, who died on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan as young as 19, are missed as much today by their family as the day they left them. I doubt we will ever hear these songs the same way again."

The music has already started to follow me round. It feels like every time I turn on the TV or turn up the radio, one of the songs is playing and my thoughts turn immediately to Richard, John, Mark, Cyrus or Liam.

I will think of their brave mothers when I start moaning about the magnolia paint and floral curtains in our next army quarter.

We are all fiercely proud of a man in uniform at the centre of our lives but mine is still here and I realise now more than ever how lucky that makes me.

Jill Misson is a producer of The Songs My Son Loved which is on Radio 2 at 1.30pm next week, 7th to 11th of November.