Career
He came to believe passionately in the value of the testimony of working people and the creative importance of the oral tradition and its relationship to folk music This became the key to his work in radio, theatre and in his extensive teaching activities. The Charles Parker Archive is deposited in the Archives & Heritage Service at the Library of Birmingham and consists of tapes, production books, papers, correspondence and scripts for most of the programmes Charles Parker produced and the organisations in which he was active.
lieutenant contains historical records for studying the culture of the 1950s-1970s in broadcasting, the folk revival, popular music, community arts - as well as contemporary social and political issues.
Parker made programmes with blind people, Irish labourers, workers in China in 1972, Asian teenagers, protesters against the Vietnam War and other minorities traditionally denied a voice on the air. Parker collaborated on several occasions with documentarist Philip Donnellan, notably on "The Colony" (1963) and "The Irishmen" (1965).
The Charles Parker Archive Trust is active in promoting the Archive and in fundraising to disseminate its contents. Two Heritage Lottery grants have enabled cataloguing to take place within the City of Birmingham"s Collecting Histories project
The annual was first organised by Professor Seán Street of the Centre for Broadcasting History Research at Bournemouth University.
This has been hosted at Bournemouth, at the School of Media in Birmingham City University, at the University of Sunderland and most recently at the Library of Birmingham. The day takes the form of a conference celebrating Charles Parker"s work, the radio feature in general, and other related topics. The is now organised by Andy Cartwright, of Soundscape Productions and the University of Sunderland, on behalf of the Charles Parker Trust and is now hosted by universities around the United Kingdom. Since 2008 the conference has been celebrating the 50th anniversaries of the Radio Ballads.
2008 - "The Ballad of John Axon" (Bournemouth), 2009 - "The Song of a Road" (Bradford Media Museum), 2010 - "Singing the Fishing" (University of Sunderland), 2011 - "The Big Hewer" (University of Sunderland at CastleGate Centre, Newcastle), 2012 - "The Body Blow" (University of Westminster), 2013 - "On the Edge" and "The Fight Game" (Salford University) and 2014 - "The Travelling People" (Library of Birmingham) The 2015 event will take place at the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow on Friday 27 March 2015.
