Author:

  1. Radio Papesse (RP) launches the Premio LUCIA for audio productions in Italian, as stated in the announcement.
  2. Premio LUCIA is:
    1. a production agreement for the completion of an unpublished work [PROGETTI]. 
    2. a reproduction fee for existing works [OPERE AUDIO]
  3. All projects sent, which include a CV, a signed copy of these terms and conditions, the receipt of the € 10 registration fee and the applicant’s portfolio, by and no later than 11pm (CET) on 29 February 2024, are eligible for the award.
  4. The jury’s judgment is final. 
  5. Works that have already been produced or published are eligible for the Award category Published Works.
  6. Applicants guarantee the originality of their proposal and release RP and A.D.N. from any liability in case of copyright plagiarism.
  7. In the event that the stories are to be based on the works of third parties, participants release RP from all possible disputes with the authors.
  8. The copyright on the projects submitted to the LUCIA Award remains entirely with the applicants; RP may not develop them independently.
  9. The reading, the selection of the projects and the relationship with the applicants will take place in full respect of their privacy. 
  10. By signing the acknowledgement and acceptance of these terms and conditions, participants give their consent to the processing of their data for all that concerns the regular management of the Award.
  11. The contract to be signed between RP and the winners of the LUCIA Award acknowledges a fee of € 2.000,00, which will be paid in two installments: the first within two weeks after the announcement, the second upon delivery of the work.
  12. The payment will be taxed according to the tax regime of the winners.

After three extraordinary editions we’ve shared with our friends at Archivio dei Diari (the Diary Archive), this year the LUCIA Award is changing its format. Though our interest in personal stories and the use of archive materials remains strong, we are moving on from Pieve Santo Stefano and its stories and are now going to listen to yours, those you have already told and those only you have in your ears. 

Premio LUCIA awards:

  • [OPERE AUDIO] existing audio works produced from January 2022 to January 2024 > €500
  • [PROGETTI] grant for the production of new works > €2000. 

In the first case, we ask you to share an mp3 file and a short synopsis. In the second case, please write your idea to us in 2000 characters maximum. In both cases, tell us who you are: you can send CVs, portfolios, audio portraits…  

As always, two caveats remain: the LUCIA Prize is open to productions in Italian. The new works are expected to last no longer than 30 minutes.

Who can participate?

The Award is open to young producers and established professionals. You can participate alone or with a production group, as a collective or a theater company: prior experience in narrative audio production or familiarity with audio storytelling will be favourably valued. 

Whatever your language might be, the Lucia Award is only for productions in Italian.

What do we expect?

  1. Works already being produced, whether distributed or not, as of January 2022. Single episodes of podcast series are also allowed as long as they have narrative autonomy, i.e. as long as they are stand-alone stories within the single episode.
  2. A project for the production of a new work that is max. 30 minutes. We are looking for good stories and audio rich productions. LUCIA awards audacity and experimentation with formats and sound!

In the first case, we ask you to share the mp3 file and a short synopsis. In the second case, please write your idea to us in 2000 characters maximum. In both cases, tell us who you are: you can send CVs, portfolios, audio portraits…  

As always, two caveats remain: the LUCIA Prize is open to productions in Italian. The new works are expected to last no longer than 30 minutes.

A single proposal per entry fee is accepted.

What do you get?

LUCIA awards two projects with € 500,00 and €2.000,00. The audio works will be presented at LUCIA Festival 2024, released on radiopapesse.org and luciafestival.org. 

As for the new work, Radio Papesse is committed to supporting its national and international circulation. 
Radio Papesse also holds the discretion to award one or more special mentions to works that have already been completed.

How can you participate?

To participate you must:

fill in the registration form [where you will be asked to upload a portfolio / bio, the receipt of payment of the € 10.00 registration fee and a link to the audio file in the case of already completed works or a project idea outline for unpublished works],

no later than 11.00 PM on February 29th, 2024.

If you have just submitted a project for the YASS mentorship program, the registration fee is 5 euro.
For any further doubts or questions, please write to premiolucia[at]radiopapesse.org

Shortlisted Projects and Works Release

The shortlist of finalist projects and the winner for the category NEW WORKS, as well as the winner and special mentions in the category WORKS ALREADY PRODUCED will be announced by mid-March 2024.
The winning audio stories will be presented at the LUCIA Festival 2024, from 13 to 15 December.

The jury’s motivations will be published on the luciafestival.org website.

The jurors are

Orecchiabile – Giacomo Bagni and Chiara Sagramola –  is a newsletter that recommends podcasts and audio works from the point of view of listeners, not producers. Edited by Chiara Sagramola and Giacomo Bagni, every now and then it pushes into the real world by organising public listenings, meetings with authors and a few escapades into the world of paper.

Chloé Barreau was born from an extraordinary love story between a priest-labourer and a nurse, whose marriage caused a scandal in 1970s France. She told this story in her first film, My Father’s Fault, awarded at the Biografilm Festival. With a degree in Modern Literature from the Sorbonne in Paris, she wrote and directed short films (Acqua Passata with Riccardo Scamarcio), TV specials (Anna M. with Anna Mouglalis) and docuseries (Blue Is the Colour, Raindance Festival) before joining Fox Channels Italy as Creative Producer. For 15 years, she worked with prestigious brands (National Geographic, History Channel) but also on more personal documentary projects, such as Stardust Memories (Carboluce, 2008).

She has created several audio documentaries, including Stardust Memories (Radio Rai 3, 2020) and Malafemmina (Storytel, 2021). Chloé also works as a voice over artist and speaker: she is the voice of Plumette in Beauty and the Beast, Walt Disney; the voice of Marlena in Maneskin’s album Il ballo della vita and the French voice for Una specie di tenerezza, Chora Media.

In 2023, her documentary film Frammenti di un percorso amoroso (Greenland, 2023), presented in Venice in the Giornate degli Autori – Venice Days, won the DocIt (Italian Documentary Filmmakers Association) Special Prize of the Jury and was selected for the Nastri d’Argento in the category Cinema del Reale.

Radio Papesse – Ilaria Gadenz and Carola Haupt

About us

Radio Papesse is a webradio and online audio archive devoted to contemporary art. It works with museums and cultural institutions to talk about art practices today. It hosts and commissions experimental sound and radiophonic works, inviting artists and producers to renew the rules of broadcasting and audio narration. Among its current projects are: YASS! an international mentorship & training program for audio makers; LUCIA Festival, a festival dedicated to the listening of radio works and podcasts. Between 2018 and 2020 it was associate researcher of Pratiques d’Hospitalité – Platform for critical research and political imagination at ESAD Grenoble • Valence. It is a member of the scientific board of the Interdepartmental Research Center for Radiophony at UNIRSM – Università di San Marino. It adopts the Creative Commons License and is part of the RADIA network.

1. YASS! Mentorship Program & Production Grant 2021

You Are So Sound! is a five month one-to-one mentorship program for emerging or experienced authors and audio artists of any age.

Do you have an idea for an audio piece or a work-in-progress you need support for? We are looking for you! If you are willing to learn and share your creative process with an experienced mentor, you are in the right place! 

Three audio makers will be selected to work with the YASS! 2021 mentors Katharina Smets, Rikke Houd, Alessandra Eramo and Tempo Reale, between February and June 2021, in order to complete their audio piece before the summer. 

Each mentee will be paired with one mentor whom we think will enhance their work. Our aim is to create a space for mutual creative exchange that supports the individual process of the author.

Mentors will respect who you are and what you do but they will also positively challenge you to go beyond your production comfort zone and this means to be fully aware of what the audio materials allow you to do and to which extent you can push their boundaries. That’s also why Tempo Reale will mentor you all, through sound composition and audio design.

It’s a big step into the unknown to be open to such a professional and personal exchange but try to imagine the rich and surprising dialogue you might be engaged in!

2. What do the mentees get from YASS!?

• 40 hours of the mentorship program
To be scheduled according to the needs of both mentees and mentors
• Co-production grant: €1.200/each
• Four digital masterclasses with international audio makers
The masterclasses will be organized in collaboration with Oorzaken Festival and Atelier de création sonore et radiophonique 
• Support to the international circulation of the final productions
• Presentation of the productions at LUCIA Festival 2021

The Authors will keep the rights to their works, but will grant Radio Papesse and LUCIA Festival the permission/right to make them accessible online – on radiopapesse.org and luciafestival.org – in the frame of related events (such as educational programs, listening sessions…) and to use them for non-commercial uses in general.

3. How to participate

In order to participate, you are required to fill in the participation form and to include in it the address of a shared folder (Dropbox, GDrive, One Drive…) with:

• your portfolio
  Put all the info into a document (in English), you may include links for us to listen to
• an audio self portrait (max 2 minutes)
  How would you describe yourself in sound?
• project synopsis
  What is your project about? What is it that you’d like to work on during the Mentorship Program?
• if you’re already in the middle of your production, please include an excerpt of your draft audio (max 5 minutes)
• 15 € entry fee payment receipt [if you’re a student, you don’t have to pay it]
[via Paypal or wire transfer to
Unicredit Banca
  Agenzia: Firenze Nazario Sauro
  IBAN: IT 06 J 02008 02836 000401118520
  BIC SWIFT: UNCRITM1F13]

All these infos will help us not only to select the mentees but also to pair you with the mentors. The more we know about you, the better to foresee significant collaborations and enriching turning points in your productions. 

DEADLINE: January 17th 2021 @ 11PM (CET)

**We are all from diverse latitudes and we welcome every language, but we do ask you to keep our communication in English. 

Disclaimer: review of applicants will begin in mid-January, and all applicants will be notified by early February regarding the selection. 

3. The mentors

Alessandra Eramo

Alessandra Eramo is a sound artist and vocalist based in Berlin. She works with performance and installation, text-sound composition, video and drawing, exploring latent acoustic territories of the human voice and noise as socio-political matter.

Combining visual art and contemporary music, she develops artistic projects and live-performances that address questions of the body, memory and identity, often adopting participatory actions, field recording, site-specific modes, and experimental approaches to composition. Central to her practice is extending the voice in all its forms and implications in sonic and visual contexts.

She has exhibited and performed widely at festivals, museums, galleries and institutions such as: SAVVY Contemporary Berlin, Deutschlandfunk Kultur Klangkunst, Liminaria/Manifesta12 Palermo, Tempo Reale Festival Firenze, 6th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art, Transmediale Berlin, Heroines of Sound Festival Berlin, Museum FLUXUS+ Potsdam, Roulette New York, Padiglione Italia nel Mondo/54th Venice Biennale.

Her radiophonic piece Tanz Sediment (2020) was commissioned and broadcast by Deutschlandfunk Kultur.

Rikke Houd

Rikke Houd is an independent Danish radio maker working in the field of crafted audio storytelling and documentary art. She came into radio from writing, drawn to it by listening to features from the Danish Montage Group (a department at the Danish Broadcasting Corporation where the genre of radiomontage was developed since the 1930´s). These documentary radio pieces were like novels – literary works in sound. They were cinematographic, poetic, layered, rhythmic.

​After completing an MA in Radio at Goldsmiths College in 1998, she worked for the Montage Group and also its experimental off-spring Ultralyd and have worked with sound and storytelling since – in radio and podcast, theatre, exhibition, location/site specific work and in collaboration with other artforms and fields. She also coaches and teaches workshops which focus on documentary storytelling and radiophonic awareness.

As an audio storyteller, she is occupied with what happens in the meeting between the authentic material – voices, sounds, moments – and the creative shaping of the story, the fluidity of sound and the radiophonic space. How do we find our own voice as storytellers and how do we utilize the uniqueness of the sound medium?

Katharina Smets

Katharina Smets is a radio producer, performer and scholar based in Antwerp. She molds documentary materials into live performances, sound guides and radio productions.

With her transmedia collective The Space Between she explores the combinations of sound and live music, video and spoken word. Fascinated by memories and archives, her collaborations with other artists and musicians invariably start from a shared need to give voice to vulnerable or forgotten stories.

Currently working on a PhD in the arts, Katharina teaches audio storytelling at the Royal Conservatoire in Antwerp. She is a proud co-founder of MIRP, the Meeting of Independent Radio Producers.


Katharina produced work for theatre, musical ensembles and broadcast such as: STUK Leuven, muziektheater LOD & Vooruit Gent, Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam, BBC World Service, VRT in Belgium and VPRO in the Netherlands. She is currently working on an artistic podcast in collaboration with the Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, full of stories and music.

Tempo Reale

Founded by Luciano Berio in Florence in 1987, Tempo Reale is now one of the main European reference points for research, production and educational activities in the field of new musical technologies and electronic music.

Its main subjects of research reflect the polyhedral attitude of Tempo Reale towards music: the conception of great musical events, the study of real time sound processing and of the interaction between sound and space, the synergy between creativity, scientific competence, performative and educational rigour.

2. Who’s been selected? Mentees 2021

Between December 2020 and January 2021 we received over 100 submissions to the YASS! mentorship programme.
It has been an overwhelming answer both from acknowledged artists and new authors who have answered to our call from all over Europe and the Mediterranean with a mosaic of local and universal features, timeless tales and urgent stories arising from our interesting times, individual and collective concerns and dreams.

​To choose three projects only was a difficult feat, it was a work of subtraction, sometimes a bitter one, but we are happy to award the YASS! Mentorship to Jasmina Al-Qaisi, Kate Donovan e Studiolanda (Giorgia Cadeddu + Vittoria Soddu) and we are glad they will count on the guidance of Alessandra Eramo, Katharina Smets, Rikke Houd and Tempo Reale.

These three audio makers – all coming from very diverse backgrounds and experiences – have presented three projects that in terms of subject, intent or language respond to our request for narrative experimentation. Three poetically political projects – even though they are not openly so – that tell stories of solidarity care and collaboration.

We do always learn a lot from juries, and so we want to thank the mentors for being able to listen and see beyond our perspectives, and above all we thank all the participants who dedicated their time to YASS! We discovered widespread, vital communities and unexpected scenes of audio makers, young producers, exciting artists and stories worth telling.

We’re sure we’ll meet again, thank you all! 

Radio Papesse (Ilaria Gadenz & Carola Haupt)