Sean Street

Sean Street (born 2 June 1946, Waterlooville, Hampshire) is a writer, poet, broadcaster.

and Britain's first Professor of Radio.

He trained as an actor at the Birmingham School of Speech and Drama (1964–67), and spent a year in Paris, France before pursuing an acting career in the UK.

He appeared in a number of television dramas and soaps, including Alexander Graham Bell and United for BBC 1.

During 1968 he toured England and Northern Ireland with the Arion Theatre Company, and later that year joined the Drama Centre Studio, Bournemouth.

From 1969 to 1970 he was a member of the cast of Barry England's play, Conduct Unbecoming, which starred Maxine Audley, Paul Jones and Jeremy Clyde, directed by Val May, at the Queen's Theatre, London, prior to taking up his first staff position at the BBC.

In April 1970, while appearing in the West End play, Conduct Unbecoming, he was invited to sit in on a live late night BBC Radio 2 programme, where he witnessed the unfolding drama of the Apollo 13 incident.

It was a seminal moment, and persuaded Street that his future lay in the medium of radio.

He joined the staff of BBC Radio Solent later that year, as the new station prepared for its first transmission and eventually stayed there for six years.

After a four-year interval teaching drama and poetry studies at The Arts Educational School he returned to radio, this time working in the independent sector as part of the founding team of 2CR, (subsequently Heart Dorset & New Forest) Bournemouth.

As Features Editor at the station, he produced a number of documentaries and features which were heard on many stations across the ILR (Independent Local Radio) network.

After leaving Radio Solent in 1976 he took up a post teaching drama and poetry studies at the Arts Educational School, Tring Park.

Here he developed his own writing skills, including magazine journalism, poetry, playwriting and adaptation.

He was commissioned by Salisbury Playhouse to write two plays A Shepherd's Life (1985) and Wessex Days (1990) both of which were subsequently toured by Lifeblood Theatre.

In 1986, Street became freelance, making programmes for BBC Radios 2, 3, 4,the World Service and also for LBC.

The features were mostly of an historical/literary nature.

He started teaching radio production at Bournemouth University in 1987, and from the 1990s into the 21st century, he played a role in the development of the increasingly important discipline of Radio Studies in academia.

In 1992-3 Street wrote two books on literary themes, "The Wreck of the Deutschland" and "The Dymock Poets"; examples of realist-narrative criticism.

In 1993 The Royal Theatre, Northampton commissioned his play about the poet John Clare, Honest John which won the Eileen Anderson/Central Television Award for new drama in that year.

In the same year, Seren published a revised edition of his much-praised book, The Dymock Poets: Poetry, Place and Memory, which first appeared in 1993.

For the actor Christopher Robbie he wrote his one-man play on the life of Charles Darwin, Beyond Paradise – The Wildlife of a Gentle Man, which began touring in 1998 and continues to do so.

In 1999 he founded the MA in Radio Production in Bournemouth's Media School.

In the same year he was awarded a professorship, becoming Britain's first Professor of Radio, while continuing to make his own radio programmes for the main BBC networks.

Between 2000 and 2011, he was Director of the Centre for Broadcasting History Research, leading a number of significant initiatives to digitise UK radio, with particular emphasis on the commercial sector.

Between 2000 and 2010 he made several visits to Newfoundland and Nova Scotia.

Out of this came a number of radio programmes, academic papers and poems, notably The Broadcast, a sequence based on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation programme, The Fisheries Broadcast.

Between 2002 and 2006 he wrote a number of books on radio history which were to become key texts for academic courses and scholars, among them Crossing the Ether, based on research originally undertaken while studying for his doctorate on pre-war UK commercial radio and the BBC.

In 2003 he established Charles Parker Day, a one-day conference to explore aspects of the creator (with Ewan MacColl) of 'The Radio Ballads'.

This has now become an annual event in the UK radio conference calendar.

The conference includes the award of the 'Charles Parker Prize for Student Radio Features'.

In 2004 and 2005 Street was academic leader of Global Watch Missions run by the UK Department of Trade and Industry, exploring new technical developments in radio in the US, South Korea and Singapore subsequently publishing the results in reports which were to have considerable influence on many areas of UK radio development.

His radio programme The Broadcast helped to inspire his 2009 Rockingham Press collection, Time Between Tides, New and Selected Poems.

He retired from full-time academic life in 2011 and was awarded an Emeritus Professorship by Bournemouth University.

He continues to write and broadcast.

He is also a Life Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

In 2012 Routledge published The Poetry of Radio, The Colour of Sound, a work which drew together the two creative passions of his life, radio and poetry.

He has also developed collaborations with a number of composers, including Cecilia McDowall (see below).

In February 2014, the Belfast independent poetry press, Lapwing published his sequence of 25 poems, Jazz Time; a work that explores the improvisatory nature of life, being human, and the redemptive power of music.

In 2014, Routledge published The Memory of Sound: Preserving the Sonic Past.

In May 2015, Rowman and Littlefield published the revised and extended second edition of Street's Historical Dictionary of British Radio.