Fandom and The Archers audio book Chapter 7, The Saturday Group

It’s Saturday, it must be the Archers!

Saturday Academic Archers Group aka The Saturday Group

This chapter is by fans, about fans, for fans. This chapter explores the creation, development and meaning of a Saturday morning fan group which met online through and beyond the initial COVID-19 lockdown. The chapter describes the initial phase of Saturday morning online sessions over a three-month period which comprised ‘formal’ presentations of papers from past conferences. These sessions were convened by Drs Nicola Headlam and Cara Courage. Secondly, the chapter sets out the ‘development’ phase of the Saturday Academic Archers Group or more fondly, the ‘Saturday Group’, which continued to meet informally after the conclusion of the formal series of presentations. Through autoethnographic qualitative, narrative methods, we explore what the sessions and the group connection mean to the members of the Saturday Group. The experiences of the Saturday Academic Archers Group are then related to the concept of Community of, in relation to social groups and associations. The relevance of fandom as a Community of Practice is highlighted with suggestions for the way in which such communities can offer support through difficult national and in the case of the Saturday Group, international, experiences.

The Saturday Academic Archers Group meets on Saturday mornings to discuss The Archers and other topics of interest. It is a sub-set of the Academic Archers and began meeting online in 2020. Collectively the members of the group have been listening to The Archers for well in excess of 1000 years, including one member who heard the first episode and one member who has just come of age having listened for a mere 18 years. The Saturday Academic Archers Group authoring this chapter are George Askwith, Claire Astbury, Allison Ball, Janet Beck, Stephen Bowden, Pat Brown, Helen Burrows, Meg Burton, Sally Cadle, Pam Davies, Christine Freeman, Louise Gillies, Dale Godfrey, Victoria Grattidge, Vanessa Hall-Smith, Ruth Heilbronn, Katharine Hoskyn, Rosalind Janssen, Helen Jubb, Susie Lloyd, Lilian Goldberg, Nic Maxfield, Felicity Macdonald-Smith, Jill Manasseh, Sarah Kate Merry, Deborah Miller, Christine Narramore, Sarah Parish, Sarah Playfair, Karen Pollock, Sarah Spilsbury, Roberta Wedge, and Vanessa Wilde.