Sci-Fi Bulletin: Exploring the Universes of SF, Fantasy, Horror and Spy-fi!

Beneath Our Feet, a brand new six-part audio drama about community resistance, myths, and vertical cities, will be arriving on all usual podcast outlets August 24.

It tells the story of a group of five young people – Tommy, Rosa, Finn, Jamal and Haroona – on the final night before the estate they live on is destroyed forever to ‘regenerate’ the area. They each find themselves drawn down to the cave system that lies beneath the estate for one final rave in the world beneath before it’s shut off forever. But a cave collapse means they find themselves travelling deeper into the underground system and its stories than they ever expected.

At its heart, Beneath Our Feet is a drama about communities under siege: be it by gentrification, climate collapse, or cultural erasure. The series is a queer, vibrant, surreal love letter to resistance. It’s about community action, solidarity, and working together across axes of marginalisation to survive.

Beneath Our Feet is funded by Arts Council England, directed and produced by Tash Hyman and Fay Lomas (award-winning creators of Land Skeins), with Janina Matthewson as lead dramaturg (Within the Wires, The Cipher), and Ella Watts as consultant producer (Doctor Who: Redacted). It was created through a writers room of writers Zia Ahmed, Subika Anwar-Khan, Sam Grabiner, Ellie Kendrick, Tiwa Lade and Am Stubberfield, with sound design by Alice Boyd and Munotida Chinyanga, and composition by Oliver Vibrans.

Writer Am Stubberfield said ‘As a queer, working class and trans writer it was a great opportunity to create characters with that lived experience who possessed a vibrancy and joy. Being in the writers room was an amazing experience and an awesome opportunity to collaborate with a group of brilliantly talented artists to collectively build a world and story together. Writing for Beneath Our Feet has given me my first audio drama writing credit and I’ve gained invaluable skills through the process’.

Writer Subika Anwar-Khan said ‘Writing an episode of an audio drama was a new experience which at first I found challenging. Over the course of my time in the writers room I was excited about structuring the plot and determining character traits. Learning about the craft of writing for audio is something I now want to continue developing.’

Ella Watts said ‘It’s so exciting to be involved with the Resound programme this year. Whilst radio and theatre have a long and storied history, there’s often a disconnect between podcast producers and theatre makers in the UK. It’s great to see Tash and Fay closing that gap with these pressing stories created by, for and about marginalised communities under siege.’

Coinciding with this, Jump Spark and no more superheroes. have announced the second year of the RESOUND programme, conceived by audio creators Tash Hyman and Fay Lomas. RESOUND is an artist development programme, which provides opportunities for theatre artists to gain skills in audio creation.