Ekene Akalawu is based at the BBC’s MediaCity home in Salford, where she is a producer on Front Row, BBC Radio 4’s flagship arts magazine programme, and The Verb, Radio 4’s poetry performance and discussion programme.

She has made many special editions of Front Row, including Making Culture At Home, which looked at how arts organisations root themselves in their local communities; A First and A Final, which followed an RSC production of Cymbeline; The Blue Edition, an exploration of the colour blue; and a bank holiday edition dedicated to Scarborough.

This year, she has produced a special edition of The Verb at the Hay Festival, The Love Verb marking Valentine’s Day, and a Verb edition recorded around a flotilla of handmade boats.

For over two decades, she has produced a wide variety of programmes for Radio 4, Radio 3, Radio 1 and the World Service, including Speaking in the Streets, a Radio 4 documentary about Motown’s spoken-word label, Black Forum. The Guardian devoted a radio review column to the programme, describing it as “inspirational” and “Storytelling at its most powerful”. She would like to think those descriptions apply to many of the programmes she’s made.