One of the world’s greatest radio stations broadcast from one of the world’s smallest countries.
“Radio Luxembourg – The Station that Changed our World” is a 360° transmedia project exploring the fascinating stories of Europe’s most influential commercial radio station and its formative influence on generations of listeners.
With a history that dates back to the 1920s, the radio station was an important propaganda tool during WWII and has had an immeasurable global impact on popular culture throughout the 1960s, 70s and 80s, even beyond the Iron Curtain.
Radio Luxembourg has fans from all corners of the world; Europe and the former Eastern Bloc, Canada, the United States, Africa and even Australia. Hundred million listeners tuned in every night, because it was the only place where they could listen to pop music. They combined form with content and were not only a radio station but also a magazine, an event organizer and finally a transnational social media platform.
This unprecedented international reach made Radio Luxembourg a force of enormous political relevance. By using entertainment as a form of cultural diplomacy, Radio Luxembourg shaped not only international pop culture but also European politics, history and identity. Radio broadcasting has long been the most effective and influential communication tool during the larger part of the twentieth century. As a matter of fact, radio was a synonym of power.
This 360° transmedia project tells the interconnected and remarkable stories of this radio station from different perspectives by involving local as well as global communities. This collective examination of Luxembourg’s cult radio station surfaces a transnational and multi-faceted history of the 20th century in Europe and beyond, all broadcast from the tiny Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg.
A 360° Transmedia Documentary
The project will evolve over the next four years and has different outputs:
Online: This website, used right now for the crowdsourcing campaign, will transform into the central hub of the project. It will skilfully combine various interconnected media and platforms and serve as a jumping off point to all other components of this project.
In XR: with our AR tour and immersive 3D experience of the Villa Louvigny.
On Screen: with our documentary film.
On Air: with our participatory radio/podcast series.
On Site: with workshops, debates and temporary guided tours at the Villa Louvigny, as well as permanent immersive XR stations in the Radio Luxembourg cafe.
On Tour: as the former DJs used to do, at festivals and in different countries, with the help of the local embassies.
In classrooms: with a teachers’ guide, which will be freely available in different languages.