RADIO Lookout was a live performance that took the form of a radio broadcast created by a group of children from across the city of Kanazawa. From their purpose-built miniature radio studio at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art they played records from the future – sound collages they had created describing their home city 30, 60 and 90 years from now. As the sun set the children told the story of Kanazawa as it is now and as they imagined it would be in the future – a lifetime of change condensed into 45 minutes of radio for an audience listening comfortably at home, gazing out of their windows into the darkening evening.

RADIO Lookout was an adaptation of our earlier project Lookout created especially for the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art as the culmination of three years of research, residencies and conversations. RADIO Lookout responded to the circumstances of the COVID-19 Pandemic by transforming the original piece’s intimate face-to-face encounters into an interactive piece of live radio.

To create the performance we collaborated remotely with a group of 10 Kanazawa school children who will wrote and performed the piece themselves.

The project was an invitation for both the young performers and their listeners to reflect on their relationship to the city of Kanazawa. Braiding together urban planning and science fiction, climate emergency and future utopias, it asked its listeners to consider what we might learn from entrusting children with the responsibility for shaping our collective future.

Alongside listening to the live broadcast of RADIO Lookout, audience members received in the post a pair of beautiful illustrated postcards that introduce and contextualise the performance. They were also given the opportunity to interact live with the children as part of their radio show – reaching out through the airwaves to speak together about the past, present and future of the city.

Created by Andy Field & Beckie Darlington

Music by Tom Parkinson

Design by Mamoru Iriguchi

Commisioned by 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa