Palermo Sound Radio – Community Sound Hub
Palermo Sound Records s.r.l
Italy
Palermo Sound Radio is a participatory radio project that moves across Palermo’s historic centre, activating different spaces through audio production and community workshops. Over five months, it builds an editorial board of young people, residents, and cultural operators who co-produce radio episodes rooted in neighbourhood sounds and stories. Each episode is created in a different venue through open workshops, field recordings, and live sessions during the Palermo Sound Festival (Sept 2026). All content feeds an open-access sound archive of Palermo’s cultural identity.
Palermo’s historic centre hosts diverse communities – residents, migrants, students, cultural workers – who share proximity but lack shared platforms for collective expression. Access to media production remains concentrated among professionals. Radio, as a low-barrier itinerant medium, can activate underused spaces and give voice to those excluded from cultural production.The project runs May–October 2026 with five activities: (1) Eight open workshops held across different venues, teaching radio journalism, field recording, and audio editing – each site-specific to the hosting space. (2) Collective production of 10+ radio episodes – sound walks, oral histories, interviews – co-created by participants in the locations they explore. (3) Live radio broadcasts during the Palermo Sound Festival (Sept 3–6), moving between festival venues. (4) An open-access digital sound archive structured by neighbourhood and theme. (5) A participatory editorial process where citizens choose stories, conduct interviews, edit content, and manage broadcasts – building on the NOVIZIATO SONORO participatory democracy experience.