who we are
Headstrong
Athena has helped sharpen our organisation's mission and vision, enhanced our media performance and helped us identify a clearer vision about how to reach our most important constituencies.
Clients - RTÉ Lyric fm
Project: Documentary and factual radio programming
Athena Media has created national gold winning documentaries for RTÉ Lyric fm.
The most recent Athena Media production for Lyric fm was five part series Re-Imagining Opera, an exploration of the future of opera in Ireland while following the story of new opera company Wide Open Opera and its first production, Wagner's Tristan & Isolde which was performed in the Bord Gais Energy Theatre in September and October 2012. The series was broadcast on Niall Carroll’s Classical Daytime every day from the 19th - 23rd November 2012.
The series culminated in Taking on Tristan an hour long behind the scenes feature on the story of Wide Open Opera led by conductor Fergus Sheil. The documentary was broadcast on the 23rd of November 2012. To find out more about the series and listen to podcasts go here.
The Athena Media radio documentary Word of Mouth - the story of Fighting Words on the creative writing centre established by Roddy Doyle and Sean Love was completed and broadcast on October 28th 2011 under the BAI Sound & Vision scheme. You can listen to the documentary here .
In early 2011 Athena Media won an Independent Radio Production (IRP) grant with RTÉ to produce a music series on RTÉ lyric fm. The radio series was called High Fidelity: A Century of Recorded Song with Jack L and Julie Feeney. It was a 26 part radio series which told the story of sound recording, song and singers and was a weekly one hour series from May 16th, 2011 every Monday night on RTE lyric fm. The series was produced by MD of Athena Media Helen Shaw, executive producer was Peter Browne from RTÉ and the sound engineer was Lochlainn Harte.
The episodes can be heard on the RTÉ lyric fm website here .
The series gained a large following on facebook and twitter here and here .
The series, High Fidelity, was repeated on RTE Radio 1 in 2012 starting in December 2011.
In 2010 Athena Media won a BAI Sound and Vision grant to produce a radio series for RTÉ Lyric FM which began in April 2010. The project, An Opera for Carlow, followed the story of a community based arts project led by conductor Fergus Sheil who later featured in Athena Media's series on Wide Open Opera. The professional music team worked with the people of Carlow to create, perform and stage a new opera in the Visual Arts Centre in Carlow.
The series included regular radio features for RTÉ Lyric fm's In Tempo programme beginning in late June 2010 running until April 2011.
To read more about An Opera for Carlow project please click here.
A full one hour documentary produced by Helen Shaw was broadcast in July 2010 and on November 14th the full opera went out.
For more information on RTÉ Lyric FM's In Tempo programme please click here.
To listen to the full documentary please click here.
In 2008 Athena Media won a Sound & Vision grant for a one hour documentary called Tower Songs about the community music based project on regeneration in Ballymun in Dublin. It was broadcast on Lyric FM on Saturday February 14th 2009 at 5:30pm. It won a Gold PPI Award for Best Music Special at the 2009 PPI Radio Awards.
To read about the Tower Songs Project please click here.
To listen to the podcast of the Tower Songs documentary please click here.
Athena Media won a BCI Sound & Vision production grant towards Women and Words a major series on Irish women writers for RTÉ Lyric FM. The series was broadcast in August-September 2008 with a repeat broadcast in February-March 2009.
I listened to the broadcast from Saturday evening. It was wonderful, really captured what the project was about. Congratulations to you all.
Pauline Ashwood, RTÉ Performing Groups on 'Tower Songs' broadcast 14/2/2009