TOAST Podcast

Listen as we journey throughout the UK, recording conversations with authors, artists, actors and philosophers.

Elemental Compositions | Series 6

For our sixth podcast series we have partnered with Yorkshire Sculpture Park exploring our seasonal theme of Elemental Compositions through the work of six of the UK’s most exciting contemporary artists working today. Join writer and broadcaster Laura Barton as she journeys across the country for wide-ranging conversations with Kedisha Coakley, Tania Kovats, David Nash, Heather Peak, Saad Qureshi and Ro Robertson. With each episode, we discover how the energy of the surrounding environment combined with a unique patchwork of lived experiences and memories informs their work.

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Rhythm | Series 5

For our fifth podcast series, writer and broadcaster Laura Barton looks to the theme of Rhythm, exploring the ways in which it is harnessed creatively to stir the senses. From the rhythmic pattern that propels you into a poem, the expressiveness of a musical composition to the cadence of speech on stage or sculpting intimate scenes on a film set. Join Laura as she interviews six guests who have each developed their own unique sense of rhythm in their work. 

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Flux & Flow | Series 4

For our fourth podcast series, writer and broadcaster Laura Barton explores the theme of Flux & Flow, how we navigate change and the forces that steer our lives. Join Laura as she meets with priest and writer Marie-Elsa Bragg, publisher Sharmaine Lovegrove, author, journalist and broadcaster Joan Bakewell and author Emma Unsworth. With each interview, we discover how the changing self is something to celebrate, and how we all have the capacity for great change and innovation.

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Living Lines | Special Episode

For this special episode we explore our relationship with the line – following the marks we make through writing and weaving and tracing the lines that shape our landscape. Down the telephone line from Aberdeen, we hear Tim Ingold, academic and author of A Brief History of Lines. Tim takes us through his discoveries, suggesting that we are all interwoven and interconnected by drawing on archaeology, language, music and nature. In a noisy London square, Laura Barton speaks to Max Porter, acclaimed author of Grief is the Thing with Feathers and Lanny. Max is known for his intermingling of prose and poetry, for his physical exploration of the line on the page.

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The Making of a Pioneer | Series 3

For our third podcast series, TOAST has collaborated with the National Portrait Gallery to explore the lives of pioneering women, past and present. Join the writer Laura Barton as she meets with Shami Chakrabarti and Germaine Greer, journeys to Haworth in West Yorkshire and Charleston in East Sussex to tread in the footsteps of Emily Brontë and Vanessa Bell, and talks about the life and works of Pauline Boty and Mary Wollstonecraft with the authors Ali Smith and Claire Tomalin.

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The Unknown Path | Series 2

Our second podcast series, titled The Unknown Path, follows the writer and broadcaster Laura Barton as she journeys across the country to meet six authors, actors and naturalists - including Maxine Peake, Horatio Clare, Elif Shafak, Helen Macdonald, Kassia St Clair and Louisa Thomsen Brits. Taken to places from their past and present, we learn about the various, and often unexpected, routes their lives have taken.

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A Creative Practice | Series 1

Our first podcast series, titled A Creative Practice, follows the writer and broadcaster Laura Barton as she journeys with six creative women to the places they find inspiring – from a walled garden in Wales to the rugged coastline of Northern Ireland. Along the way we meet the head of the Royal Academy, Rebecca Salter, garden designer Sarah Price, painter Fiona Graham-Mackay, musicians YolanDa Brown and Hannah Peel and author Maggie O’Farrell.

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