The rise of anywhere and everywhere radio

In December, Ivor Novello award-winning artist Master Peace jostled through London’s streets in the back of a rickshaw that was bedecked in pink fairy lights and a matching faux fur coat. Instead of using the vehicle for its usual purpose – the blurry crescendo of a drunken Saturday night in Soho – Peace is riding with radio presenter Dulcie Whadcock, casually explaining how his friend’s imprisonment pushed him to start making music. 

“It was a close friend…we grew up [together]. That’s when I thought I needed to fix up and change my life around,” Peace tells Whadcock on her show, Rickshaw Radio, as they bob through a sea of tourists.

Whadcock’s go-to rickshaw driver, who also helps the broadcaster film TikToks and set up her camera equipment, zips in between black cabs as the passengers chat about everything from Peace’s latest EP Stupid Kids to British reality TV series Come Dine With Me. It’s the same setup in which Whadcock has interviewed a slew of artists-to-watch including Sissy Ford, Ruti and Lily Knott, as well as most recently, grime linchpin Manga Saint Hilare.

The conversations are posted monthly on YouTube, combining video clips of giggly chit-chat with impassioned singalongs as the artist’s discography is blared through the rickshaw’s speakers. And although Whadcock hasn’t been recording Rickshaw Radio for long (her inaugural interview with Ford went live in October last year), her concept is part of a wider shift happening across Europe in the past decade, where independent radio stations are saying goodbye to traditional studios and broadcasting from anywhere and everywhere.

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In Marseille, Let Him Cook Radio invites DJs from across the globe to spin bouncy and bass-heavy tracks live from a working kitchen, as chefs undergo service (skank breaks included) in the background. Elsewhere in France, Piñata Radio broadcasts from a working bar in the heart of Montpellier’s Gambetta neighbourhood. In Ukraine, 20ft Radio showcases the country’s underground electronic scene from a 20ft high shipping container. Head over to Brussels and you can visit Kiosk Radio, a station which welcomes DJs from all corners of the musical spectrum to broadcast from a wooden hut in the middle of the historic Parc Royal. 

A similar movement is taking hold across the UK. Manchester’s Steam Radio started life at the now shuttered Old Abbey Taphouse, before moving through various cafes, pubs and record shops. It’s currently gearing up to move to craft beer spot OverDraught, where it is set to resume operations shortly. Bristol’s beloved Noods Radio began in 2015 above The Surrey Vaults bar, before eventually opening its own studio-cum-café called Mickey Zoggs in 2021, which relocated at the end of 2025. Glasgow’s Buena Vida Radio first started in a record shop and now broadcasts out of a café in the south of the city. And this list is far from exhaustive. 

There’s Clyde Built Radio in Glasgow’s Barras Market and Boogaloo Radio which broadcasts out of a pub in a leafy London suburb. Globally, TukTuk Radio in Thailand broadcasts DJs performing live sets in a format similar to Rickshaw Radio. New York’s The Lot Radio streams from a repurposed shipping container in an empty lot in Brooklyn. So, what does the shift toward unconventional stations tell us about independent radio today?

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For Rickshaw Radio, the impulse to build a strong online audience means its visual output is as important as its sonic one. Inspired by series like A View From A Bridge and Chicken Shop Date, Whadcock says having an identifiable set up helps ​“develop a clear brand on social media and YouTube”.. Moving around as central London unravels in the background means the interviews are unpredictable. During shoots, Whadcock has stumbled across a phone snatching, an animal rights protest and even been ​“catcalled by some Essex lads”. There’s a spontaneity to the content Whadcock is producing. On the rickshaw, ​“every interview is unique because we’re constantly interrupted,” she says. “[There’s] never a dull moment.”

These moments playfully highlight what it takes for next gen producers like Whadcock to cut through the noise online, and how central social media has become in helping them grow. With audiences navigating overcrowded feeds and limited attention spans, standing out carries real weight, and Whadcock has shaped the project with this reality in mind. ​“I haven’t seen anyone else do interviews on pedicabs, so I think my main advantage is having a bit of a USP,” she says. ​“I think it shows that visuals are key. As much as people listen to the radio, visuals will be the driving force behind those listeners.” 

For Let Him Cook, the online landscape has also informed its unconventional set up, but in a slightly different way. Although it is also visually striking, Theo Ferrato, who founded the station in 2024, initially wanted to broadcast out of a kitchen because ​“placing music inside [an] everyday environment” created ​“intimacy and authenticity”. It’s also a funny play on a widely used phrase. Rooting his content in experiences that feel distinctly human – a particularly pertinent desire in the face of rising AI slop filling feeds – Ferrato explains that his station ​“reflects a broader desire to reconnect with reality,” with the chaos of the kitchen providing a ​“raw and dynamic identity”.

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“A kitchen is a place filled with stories, emotions, and human connection. Unlike a classic studio, which can sometimes feel neutral or disconnected, a kitchen already carries meaning,” he says. ​“Every time an artist comes to record, there is always a moment before or after the set where we share a meal and simply talk. These informal moments break the distance that can exist in classic studio environments.” So, if Rickshaw Radio has demonstrated how radio has adapted to the attention economy, Let Him Cook suggests a parallel desire to move beyond it.

For stations that have been running longer, however, unconventional set ups are rarely just a creative choice. Instead, they point to a lack of sustained funding and affordable spaces, forcing many stations to build DIY studios wherever they can. In the UK, for example, demand for public funding far outstrips supply: in one recent round of the Community Radio Fund, stations collectively requested £3.39 million, yet the fund distributed less than £500,000. 

This pressure is reflected in how stations like Manchester’s Steam Radio are forced to operate. ​“It wasn’t so much a decision as it was a necessity,” says team member Harry Ruxton of the station’s decision to bounce between cafés, pubs and community spaces since starting in lockdown. ​“Steam runs off modest resources and precarious funding, so our options in terms of a broadcasting space are limited to non-traditional studios which require little-to no rent.” 

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As costs rise across the city, the station has been left with no choice but to regularly uproot and adapt. The same is true for Bristol’s Noods Radio, where commercial rents have spiralled over the past few years. For the first five years of Noods, from 2019 onwards, co-director Jack Machin says it had to move every year, going from ​“the top of an office block one year [to] an old storage cupboard the next”. 

The constant threat of displacement has pushed some stations, where possible, to invest in their own spaces, creating self-contained environments that can sustain the station long-term. As David Fleming, who runs Glasgow’s Buena Vida Radio alongside Suz O’Neill, explains, operating from a non-traditional, self-run space in a café reduces ​“the risk of being reliant on someone else’s space and losing the home [they] have built if they go out of business or move premises”. 

However, this shift towards independence doesn’t fully eliminate the risk. For Noods, securing a permanent space came with significant financial pressure. Operating out of Mickey Zoggs until 2024, the team were given an ultimatum by their landlord: buy the building or see it sold to developers. After launching a crowdfunding campaign, they were able to relocate, but without the support of their community, the station would have likely had to close. 

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Kiosk Radio, Belgium

But the self-sufficiency can also mean increased costs, as Buena Vida Radio’s team have discovered. ​“We now also have the full financial responsibility of running our own premises,” says Fleming, ​“and that weighs very heavily in the current cost of living crisis, especially with the drastic and increasing cuts in public funding for the arts.”

Across Europe, public investment in culture and media also remains low, accounting for roughly 1% of total government expenditure, with only a fraction of that directed towards broadcasting. For Piñata Radio founders Tom Manzarek and Maxime Ryckwaert, this meant piecing together funds through personal savings and a small crowdfunding campaign when they started their station in 2018. They too had to jump around, starting initially from a bedroom, before moving to a bar, then a ​“shack just outside a venue” before eventually settling into their now long-term space. In Kyiv, DJ Misha Bondarev founded 20ft as a response to a thriving underground electronic scene with a lack of non-commercial radios to platform it. Bondarev explains he chose a 20ft metal container as a studio because ​“you only had to pay rent for the land and electricity”. 

What’s interesting is how these choices, made out of necessity, have led to spaces which act as community hubs as well as avenues of musical discovery. Originally based in a former ribbon-weaving factory, 20ft’s mobile container allowed it to move its operations next to the well known club ∄ (or K41, as it’s known colloquially). Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the radio station quickly became a site of collectivism and resistance.

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It started broadcasting its Grains of Peace series, which invites ​“artists from all over the world to sow the grains of peace and support the spirit of [Ukraine]”. Explaining that the ​“main weapons of the enemy are fear and anxiety”, Grains of Peace hopes to use music as ​“an instrument of peace, a medicine, whose power can be felt by everyone and can help to find faith, hope and peace”. Some guests use this slot to play music they find healing, or honouring music honed by a particular culture, some others are a less abstract take on what it takes to keep culture alive in a war zone. In one of the earlier shows, for example, Odesa-based DJ Vvanya Samokrutkin broadcasts his mix from a bomb shelter.

After establishing itself as a key voice for Ukrainian talent, 20ft began making connections with other players in the scene. In 2021, the station created a smaller version of its container studio, first used at the debut of Kyiv’s ICKPA festival – a showcase of Ukraine’s electronic talent. It has since paused operations following the invasion, but is set to return this summer. 20ft has also expanded its ongoing collaboration with community and music hub Brukxt to include streams from the nights it hosts there. Bondarev isn’t done either. ​“In the future, we plan to continue expanding our programming with original content that is not necessarily produced in our container studio,” he says. 

In a world increasingly dominated by digitised activity, music fans are relishing the opportunity to meet and experience it IRL. ​“I think people like the fact that we’re not only an online thing,” says Ryckwaert of Piñata. ​“It gathers a bit of everything in one space, with a lot of life and connection to be made.” Mickaël Bursztejn, founder of Kiosk Radio, has observed that listeners are using a visit to the station as an alternative to spending hours online. Built inside a public park in Brussels, just a stone’s throw away from the Royal Palace and the Belgian Federal Parliament, the very nature of Kiosk’s foliage-enclosed studio means touching grass to experience it. ​“People are craving real experiences and content that isn’t AI-generated or driven by algorithms,” Bursztejn says of the Kiosk community. ​“Our goal has always been to provide a powerful platform for those with a sharp, unique taste in music.”

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Not only have these spaces become anchors for their communities, they’ve also promoted growth. ​“It keeps the station open and discoverable to new ears that wouldn’t necessarily find it online,” says Noods’ Machin. ​“Having a physical space has allowed us to meet people from the city and different scenes that do amazing stuff, whether that’s in music or outside of.” And the impact continues to spill over, beyond the radio itself and into the wider musical ecosystem it’s a part of. ​“Glasgow is a relatively small city but we continue to be surprised by how many artists/DJ’s and creatives know of each other but have never actually met,” says O’Neill of Buena Vida. ​“We’ve seen people go on to collaborate or make music together, book each other or work together in other ways, just from having had a five minute conversation in between shows.”

For many stations, having a DIY space has also been the gateway for achieving a broad and experimental catalogue. Buena Vida​’s own space provided them with a ​“full creative freedom” as O’Neill puts it, with which they could create ​“a diverse and inclusive welcoming space for people”. 

As a result, the station has become a hub for people across Glasgow who have been excluded from the industry. ​“We’ve had radio shows hosted by asylum seekers [who had] little to no prior connection to us or to radio,” says Fleming. It’s seen them receive wider recognition. “[That show] won an award at the Refugee Festival Scotland Awards,” he continues. ​“We were also able to see that friends and family members of those taking part were listening in from a variety of countries in the Global South, which was something we found beautifully emotional.” 

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For Steam, the station’s output is broad, ranging from shows focused on dance music, such as a feature from underground hero Ruf Dug for World Radio Day, to shows that are more experimental, or politically minded. It has hosted the Greater Manchester Tenants Union’s monthly talk show where it discusses housing and renting issues facing Mancunians, and a show that platforms Giallo – the soundtrack music of Italian horror films. ​“While we’re always on hand to help and give advice, we don’t set any limits or ground rules for presenting a show on Steam – residents have full creative control when presenting their radio show,” says Ruxton. ​“The focus remains on keeping the project open to new ideas and fresh faces, bringing people into the fold who might not otherwise have the opportunity to.” 

In adapting to both the digital and physical conditions they face, these stations have reshaped what radio can be. It’s become more fluid and embedded in the communities it serves – something that feels increasingly essential as the outside world feels more hostile. And in learning to exist anywhere, independent radio has become something that can resonate with music lovers across the globe. As Bursztejn puts it, ​“People are craving real experiences and content that isn’t AI-generated or driven by algorithms. These stations offer a chance to step away from digital platforms and experience a genuine moment of humanity.”

Bella Koopman is a freelance writer and journalist. Follow her on Instagram.

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