The second edition of The Radio Festival (TRF) is being held in Delhi, India, to mark World Radio Day on February 13

The event is being hosted by UNESCO in partnership with Seeking Modern Applications for Real Transformation (SMART), a not-for-profit.

It aims to celebrate sound by breaking demarcation between public, private and community radio and bring them under a single platform to celebrate sound and audio broadcasting.  

This year the festival’s theme is Leaving No One Behind, one of UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).

There will be sessions on challenges in reaching out to marginalised communities, explore the potential and value proposition of convergence, and include performances and plays on preservation of old languages.

Participants include representatives of a Kannada LGBT community radio, All India Radio’s George Abraham who has successfully used radio for the blind, Radiodays co-founder Anders Held and AsiaRadioToday’s Steve Ahern.

Alexa, Google, podcasters, narrowcasters and streaming services will also take part in the festival.

A toolkit designed especially for Community Radio on UN’s SDG will also be released by Secretary Information and Broadcasting, Amit Khare.

Supported by the UN agencies the toolkit aims to demystify and simplify the 17 SDGs into simple messages and activities so that community engagement for better implementation of UN SDGs can be achieved. It will be subsequently tested in a two-day workshop that will be attended by more than 40 CR Stations.

TRF will also feature exhibitions and stalls on history of broadcasting, a model radio station, live artists and a Hot Spot- with changing activity every half hour, where innovative ideas and products that improve knowledge and practice of broadcasting will be showcased.

A comedy skit will capture the plurality and myriad tongues of radio broadcasting and an interactive Just a Minute (JAM) session will challenge popular presenters from private FM channels to speak extempore for a minute without repetition.