We're very excited to announce the competition judges

Steve Bowbrick, Tamar Millen, Caroline Mitchell and Mark Vernon are all offering their expert ears.

Less than 3 weeks to go for submitting your 1 minute radio documentaries, but we reckon anyone who wants to could make one in an afternoon. We'd rather have lots and lots of slightly rough audio than just a few very polished ones.

Steve Bowbrick has been making a living from the Internet for twenty years, participated in the dot.com boom (and the crash) and survived to join the BBC as head of digital for Radio 3, the corporation’s arts and culture radio station. He’s been a radio nut for decades, curates audio at audiolibre.net, blogs at bowblog.com and tweets at @bowbrick.

Tamar Millen is an advocate of the power of collaborative approaches to community, media and arts. Having worked in DIY media since the late 1990s, where the roles of artist, producer and consumer are increasingly blurred she believes close collaboration between the arts and community media will increase the quality and quantity of arts broadcasting and also address ways in which arts organisations respond to emergent broadcasting platforms and audiences.
Currently Tamar is Arts Co-ordinator for the Community Media Association based in Sheffield UK http://arts.commedia.org.uk/ you can follow her on Twitter @tamarmillen

Caroline Mitchell has been active in community radio for the past 30 years and in 1992 co-founded Fem FM, the first women's station in the UK. She is part time senior lecturer in radio at the University of Sunderland and an researcher/consultant/trainer/evaluator in community media working in UK and Spain. At Sunderland she launched the UK’s first Masters course in Radio Production and Management.  She is a fan of all things experimental on the radio and enjoys listening to radio features and documentaries that ‘push the boundaries’.

Mark Vernon is a sound artist and radio producer based in Glasgow, Scotland. He was a founding member of art radio collective, 'Radio Tuesday' and has produced programmes and features for stations including WFMU, RADIA, Resonance FM, CKUT, VPRO and the BBC. His radio productions range from documentaries and radio plays to more experimental audio collage and soundscape pieces. http://www.meagreresource.com/

Submit your work at http://soundcloud.com/firstspark/dropbox

Just tell us the title, how to contact you and if you are over or under 18.

The deadline is 5pm on Friday, 18^th January.