Stephen Rowley : Inter-disciplinary Artist

Following a successful career in industry, Stephen became a full-time artist in 1993. He holds degrees in Environmental Science, Chemistry and Sculpture, and often brings his knowledge on all three subjects together in his artwork.

He has been involved with recording technology since his teenage years in a college rock band. Then whilst in industry he spent some time producing and presenting a business TV programme. Since the late 90s he has concentrated more on radio, setting up three community radio stations - all of which are still running. More recently he has produced and appeared in programmes for the BBC World Service and BBC Radio 4.

Over the last 13 years Stephen has combined the skills he learnt in industry with his artist training, to deliver a large number of community projects. Most of these are concerned with community development, local heritage and the environment. He is trained in 'oral history' techniques and is currently working on an oral history DVD for the Cotswold Canals Trust.

Jurassic FM
Stephen Rowley finished the production phase of his Jurassic FM project in February – culminating in a live recording day where pupils from years 5 & 6 came together from 3 local primary schools to perform and record material they had written and prepared in response to Stephen’s production workshops. They used extracts and clips from the Spinning Yarns archives, as well as from their own research and interviews to write and perform a wide variety of radio features from jingles to news, jokes to gardening advice and of course – their very own weather reports. The finished hour long show: Jurassic FM will be available to listen to and download from the website shortly and will also be part of the project’s summer exhibition.
The oral history loan boxes should be available after Easter and are there for any school or local group who would like to learn to interview and record oral history for their own research purposes. Of course we hope you will share your recordings with us and we can add them to our growing archive. To date we have made 110 recorded interviews and are still collecting.

January & February Workshops
Stephen Rowley led two workshops in three Bridport area primary schools: St Mary’s, Bridport Primary and Marshwood Primary during January & February for his Jurassic FM schools project in which years 5 & 6 students wrote and performed a variety of content based on Spinning Yarns oral history recordings and their own research to make up an hour long radio show. The schools were given different themes: rope and net, agriculture and Bridport during the WWII. They produced an astounding array of jingles, jokes, news and features which were recorded when all three schools came together on February first for a live radio day. The finished programme will be available from the Spinning Yarns website shortly.