Washington residents have been reflecting on the formative years of the new town.
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00:00Okay if I just start by asking about the rationale behind the Ballad of the
00:03Crocodile's Neunder Pass and yeah in particular where the name came from.
00:06Right, well the Ballad of the Crocodile, first of all it's a ballad because we're
00:13based in the podcasts on radio ballads and that means that there's going to be
00:17music interspersed with lots of different interviews and there's going
00:20to be sort of recorded sounds from around the new town. Crocodile, now Milton
00:27Keynes had concrete cattle, there were other new towns who had concrete
00:32hippos and all kinds of things. For some reason Washington had concrete
00:36crocodiles and I seem to remember you mentioning yourself Neil that you might
00:41have played on these concrete crocodiles that were dotted around Princess Anne
00:46Park. Underpass, now there's loads of towns have got underpasses but the new
00:55town and particularly Washington new town was based on the idea that no
00:59schoolchild would have to cross a road to go to school so that underpasses were
01:04built in, they're in the DNA of the whole place. There's lots of roads and there's
01:08lots of underpasses underneath them and they're a really unique part of the
01:12architecture. Okay and I know people are obviously talking and reminiscing about
01:16the time in Washington new town and so what are some of the key things
01:20people like to talk about? Well definitely as mentioned the underpasses
01:26and the whole road system. I think the majority of people have mentioned the
01:33district and whether they were infuriating or whether people quite
01:37liked them and liked the order of things but certainly it being a safe place and
01:43you didn't have to cross a road and being able to you know let children out
01:50to play without worrying about the busy roads but definitely the architecture of
01:56the different villages. We even spoke to architects as well and people talked
02:02about many other things. RCA's came up quite a lot and the shopping centres and we did an episode all about ghosts and witches as well in Washington so that was quite a fun one.
02:19I understand the University's been heavily involved as well so what's the
02:22University's role been? So the University has been involved because our MA in radio
02:28audio and podcasting some of the students there have been helping form a
02:33community podcasting group and they've been working with people at Arts Centre
02:38Washington to help with recordings editings and so on and also we've been
02:44doing some a bit of research about podcasting itself because it's a
02:48relatively new thing and lots of older people are really interested in it but
02:53they don't necessarily know what it is and how to get it and actually it means
02:57that people have been learning about podcasting itself so they've been
03:02learning about the process of making podcasts but also about where to find
03:06them on their phones or their laptops and also talking to maybe younger
03:09members of the family about what they think about podcasting.