If you have a creative idea and want to get it played on the radio – the BBC may be able to help you.
Upload is on BBC Local Radio airing every Thursday and Saturday from 6.00-8.00pm, welcoming spoken word submissions of all kinds: poetry, fictional writing, podcasts, comedy (stand up or sketch), blogs, vlogs and theatre. It’s a great opportunity for you to send in your creative spoken word ideas and get them on the radio.
This is a good chance to develop your creativity and showcase your talent on the BBC. Everything uploaded is watched, read or listened to and may even be selected to go on air or on BBC digital platforms.
No fancy audio equipment is required, you can just record into your voice notes app on your phone, or record into your laptop if you prefer. Video and images can be made on mobile. For text, it’s as easy as saving your file as a PDF and uploading it.
Video uploads are welcome as well, and some will be selected to feature on the BBC Upload social media pages and on the BBC website.
There is no deadline and you can submit all year round and upload as many times as you wish, whenever you want.
This is a free and open opportunity to try out and learn how to produce a piece of work for radio and if your upload gets selected for broadcast, the BBC may invite you for an interview with your region’s Upload presenter to talk more about it.
Here’s a few tips from BBC presenters…
- If you’re feeling a bit nervous, please don’t be, just give it a go, they love discovering your creativity – whatever it is.
- If you’re uploading something you’ve written they’d really love to hear you reading it, either in full or a sample of it. If you are not up for performing yourself, you can upload it as a text document.
- If you’re recording audio, either on its own or as part of a video, try to do it somewhere where you have lots of soft furnishings around. For example, this could be somewhere with curtains, carpets and upholstery. Recording like this gives your sound a better quality because hard surfaces in rooms like kitchens and bathrooms make your recording sound ‘tinny’ and they want you to sound your best.
- Don’t worry about adding any music, soundtrack or sound effects to your audio or video if that’s not what you would usually do – they can put on some final polish before broadcast if it would add to the audience’s experience of your work.
- If you would like to upload something that’s more than around ten minutes’ duration, then please choose your absolute favourite shorter section, scene or passage from it to upload and just let them know on the upload form that it’s part of something bigger.
- Don’t worry about what genre your upload would fit into – they are open to everything.
More information can be found on the BBC website here and follow Upload on TwitterX , Instagram and Facebook.
