Sound Delivery

The Twentieth Century Society exists to safeguard the heritage of architecture and design in Britain from 1914 onwards. Caseworkers are assigned specific buildings which are under threat from demolition or change. One of the society’s key campaigns has centred on Robin Hood Gardens – a council housing complex in Poplar, east London, designed in the late 1960s by architects Alison and Peter Smithson. Sounddelivery was asked to help promote the campaign to a wider audience and specifically help to create an audio slideshow to profile the buildings’ merits and argument for protection.

We worked with Jo Moore and Catherine Croft at the society to create the slideshow and visited Robin Hood Gardens on two occasions – first to record an interview with architect, Ken Baker, and then we returned to interview local residents. We worked with a professional photographer to capture pictures and sourced archive images where needed.

There is a certain level of controversy around Robin Hood Gardens. There are as many people desperate to save the buildings as they are who want it torn down. After making the slideshow we alerted the team at societyguardian.co.uk who were very interested in running some editorial. After seeing the slideshow we produced they invited the Twentieth Century Society to write a Joe Public Blog comment piece and commissioned their own video.  All these elements, the slideshow, online article and video were put on the web and cross promoted in the main supplement. And on the day it all went live the visitors to this website went through the roof!