Michael Umney – Audio and Documentary

Full-ish details of my working life:

Awards

2025 Churchill Fellowship Recipient

Gold Award Winner, New York Festivals Radio Awards 2025

Winner of the URTI Radio Grand Prix 2024

Finalist, New York Festivals Radio Awards 2024

Gold, Arts Producer of the Year, Audio Production Awards 2018 and 2021

Highly Commended, AIB Awards, Radio / Audio Arts and Culture 2019

Radio Documentary and Podcast

Freelance audio producer since 2017 providing a full range of services from research, editing and consultancy to complete productions for independent companies including Reduced Listening, Novel, Falling Tree and Just Radio as well as for Resonance, the production company I co-manage. I have written (or co-written), researched, directed and produced more than twenty BBC Radio documentaries, many award winning and critically acclaimed and most featured on Radio 4’s Pick of the Week. I am experienced in producing my own original commissions, the ideas of others and collaborating with presenters to unpack and realise their vision. I have also produced dozens of podcast episodes for various clients and collaborators, specifications and budgets. Selected titles include:

  • Daughters of Thunder w/ Alvin Hall (BBC World Service, 2026)
  • Ways of Not Seeing w/ Joe Rizzo Naudi (BBC Radio 4, 2025)
  • Alvin Hall’s Other America (BBC World Service, 2024)
  • Diane Arbus: Intimate Portraits (BBC Radio 4, 2023) with Alvin Hall / ***** – Financial Times
  • Knock, Knock: 200 Years of Sound Effects (BBC Radio 4, 2023) 
  • Warsan Shire on A Nation of Poets (BBC Radio 4, 2023)
  • Peter Greenaway: Painting with Film (BBC Radio 4, 2022)
  • The Reluctant Millionaires (BBC World Service, 2022)
  • Stewart Lee: Unreliable Narrator (BBC Radio 4, 2021) / “erudite and engrossing” – Chortle
  • Putin’s Third Act (BBC Radio 4, 2021) with Max Seddon (Financial Times).
  • The Art of Now: Hearing Architecture (BBC Radio 4 2020) / “a fabulous moving programme” – Grayson Perry; “exquisite radio; changes…the way you perceive the world.” – The Telegraph.
  • The Age of Consultancy (BBC Radio 4, 2019) With Richard Brooks (Private Eye). 
  • An Alternative History of Art (BBC Radio 4, 2018) Six episodes of a 10 part series.
  • A Picture Held Us Captive (BBC Radio 4, 2017) “opens your mind like a blossoming flower.” – The Observer.

Podcasts include the Poetry Society Podcast, the Filthy Lucre podcast with Richard Brooks (Private Eye Magazine) and work for Sussex NHS Mental Health Trust, the Royal Geographical Society, Tate, Sound and Music, Vodafone and Audible. 

Site Specific Radio Broadcast

I have over a decade of experience in site-specific broadcast, solo and as part of larger teams. I‘ve project managed production and technical delivery of live-to-air FM and online broadcasts from a wide range of diverse locations, often working with local communities to empower them to take control of as many aspects as possible of their own broadcasts or with a mixture of professional and non-professional broadcasters. Major projects include: 

2023 – Resonance FM X Making Sense broadcast, South London Gallery.

2020 – Bank Holiday Broadcast – South London Gallery. Production, consultancy, training and technical delivery for 24hrs of site specific community radio on three estates in south London. 

2019 – Safina Radio Project – Consultant and production team member for online radio station documenting artists conversations at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale in Kochi, India.

2019 – London Night Council Radio – Programming, conceptualisation and technical solutions for a themed pop-up internet radio station at the Museum of London.

2018 – The Exeter Whisper – Project Manager for a series of sound based artistic interventions by Ed Baxter, commissioned by Exeter University. For Resonance FM.

2015 and 14 – Live from the Port Eliot Festival – Live, off-grid broadcasts combining Resonance presenters and festival performers. As part of my role at Resonance FM.

2013 and 2014 – Hearsay International Audio Arts Festival, Ireland – Research, planning, project management and production of six hours of ultra-local, community produced radio.

2014 – Remote Performances at Outlandia, Glen Nevis – Project Management and technical solutions. Broadcasting from an off-grid treehouse with local people and 21 sound artists. 

2014 – In Search of Perfect Sound: the Exponential Horn, Science Museum, London – Three hour daily live broadcast for a vast speaker horn. Producer, project manager and co-engineer.

2013 – Resonance @ VOID Gallery, for Derry-Londonderry City of Culture – Producer and assistant project manager on five week FM community radio station / art project broadcasting in Derry and London. As part of my role at Resonance FM.

Resonance FM: Station Management and Broadcast

2013 to 17 – Project and Production Manager, Resonance FM

Lead project manager on outside broadcasts and major off-site events; lead producer for Resonance’s production arm. Part of a four person team managing an award winning London based community art station. Overseeing a 24/7 broadcast platform on FM, DAB and online.

Organisation and problem solving in a busy and unpredictable live broadcast environment.

Management and guidance of over 120 volunteers, support and training for engineering staff, negotiating the requirements of programme makers, visiting musicians and artists.

Assessing and supporting the production of programme ideas from the individuals and institutions.

Co-founding and overseeing Resonance’s audio production arm. Produced two Radio 4 programmes in 2015: In the Moment (“a lovely, impressionistic programme” – Miranda Sawyer) and Orpheus Underground (“a shining piece…This was grown-up radio” – Gillian Reynolds, The Telegraph).

I also produced a range of programme for Resonance including Drawing Talks: 53 part series to coincide with Jerwood Drawing Prize 2016, Global Globules with Baconface: 52 music radio shows with Stewart Lee, January 2016-17, projects for Jerwood Open Forest 2015, The Science Gallery, and The Foundling Museum.

Audiobooks

Audiobook producer for Wardour Studios, London since December 2023, I have directed a range of fiction and non-fiction audiobooks for publishers including Harper Collins and 4th Estate.

Other Projects

Ongoing – The Matter of Britain, sound recording and sound design for a community art film.

Ongoing – ICRN (Independent Community Radio Network) advisory team. 

2019-23 – Board member of Skylark, an experimental rural FM station on Dartmoor.

2013-14 and 2019 – Part-time studio manager at markettiers.

2016-17 – Guest audio production tutor for the Royal College of Art Critical Writing MA.

2013-14 – Theatre sound design for productions at the Arcola and New Diorama Theatre, London.

Academic qualifications

2010 – 11 – Distinction MA Radio Goldsmiths, University of London.

2006 – 09 – BA (Hons) English Literature, University of Durham: 2:1