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'If Europe's ports are underwater, Brexit may seem less important': we're expanding climate change coverage

2018-09-27T09:50:00+00:00

From 3 October The World Tonight on BBC Radio 4 and Newshour on BBC World Service will be covering climate change every week.

The BBC’s been reporting for a long time that climate change is not some distant issue whose effects that will only be felt by our grandchildren.

Temperature rises are affecting crops, changing the rainforests, and putting massive amounts of extra energy into the world’s weather systems. Rising temperatures are pushing malaria into parts of Africa that have never had the disease.

The increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has made the oceans more acidic, so much so that we can actually observe the shells of tiny snails being dissolved by the water, threatening the entire marine food chain.

While the BBC has been consistently covering all of this, and investing heavily in specialist correspondents, climate change doesn’t always get the attention it deserves.

One reason for this is the way daily news programmes tend to work. We’re very good at covering the events of the day. The problem, which all editors and news organisations face, is that some of the most important things happening in the world aren’t always events.

They’re often a process, a trend, a gradual change. They don’t always compete well against daily news events that feel more urgent – explosions, elections, Presidential tweets.

So to make sure climate change doesn’t get crowded out, we’re committing ourselves and our programmes to covering it at least once week.

However, we’re not intending to give you a weekly update on Doomsday.

Mitigating climate change, and adapting to the consequences of what we’ve already done to the atmosphere, is driving huge changes in technology, business, and increasingly, politics.

Our first edition will come from Norway, a country that’s grown rich on fossil fuels, but now hoping to become Europe’s renewable energy “battery.”

We’ve also signed up some climate change diarists from around the world: people on the front line of a changing planet who will keep us posted on what they see around them, from the polar ice caps, to the Amazon, to the Pacific islands, via the Scottish Highlands.

Rest assured – we’ll still cover the daily news. It’s just that if climate change leaves Europe’s ports underwater, Brexit may seem a bit less important.

BBC Radio Christmas Appeal with St Martin-in-the-Fields

2017-12-01T10:40:00+00:00

Connection outreach worker, Barry

The church of St Martin-in-the-Fields on Trafalgar Square has a long history of welcoming and supporting homeless people. A BBC Radio Christmas Appeal with St Martin-in-the-Fields to help fund this work is almost as old as the BBC itself – it first appeared in the Radio Times in 1927, so the collaboration is now in its 91st year.

One of the great things about my job as Producer of Radio 4 Appeals is being the Producer of the Radio side of the Christmas Appeal. I work closely with St Martin’s to share with listeners the personal stories behind the work they do.

At the Connection, the day and night centre in the building right next to the Church of St Martins, the aim is get to the root of what made people homeless in the first place. It may start with warm food and a machine to wash your clothes in the basement, and go through one-to-one assessments, housing advice, addiction support, creative and therapeutic groups, skills training, volunteering opportunities, and help with job applications and interviews.

Often the first contact a homeless person has with the Connection is with an outreach worker like Barry, who explains here what a typical night shift is like, helping some of London’s most vulnerable rough sleepers.

Kate Howells is Producer, Radio 4 Appeals

An interview with Stuart (pictured on the right): Stuart is a drummer whose life spiralled out of control when he lapsed into heroin addiction. He was living on the streets for three months before he was referred by an outreach worker from the Connection to the emergency night shelter to give him a place to rest and sort himself out. He is pictured with Paul, Night Centre Manager (The Connection).

Barry's experience as a Street Outreach Worker

I am a Street Outreach worker. I walk along the streets of Westminster, stopping to talk to homeless people who are sleeping in doorways and on the pavements, and in the alleyways behind buildings. There is no such thing as an average day, or “shift” and we work early in the morning and also very late at night.

There is a very different rhythm and lilt of life late at night in the capital. Once the shops are closed and the last of the revellers are on their way home, the streets, theatres, Cathedrals, and Palaces seem far more bleak and isolated places to be.

To give an example, these are just three of the people who we encountered on a recent night shift through the city:

Joe is 44. He’s sleeping in a doorway under a plastic sheet on a busy shopping street in the West End. He feels safer out in public view, although he is unlikely to sleep much. He tells us that he has experienced mental health problems for most of his adult life, and this led to a marital breakdown and him rough sleeping. Joe is reluctant to access a daycentre or a hostel bed, owing to the auditory hallucinations he is having, which he describes as “voices”, telling him the world is ending imminently.

Ellie is 25 and recently arrived from Liverpool. We are worried about her as she is regularly seen in a sleeping bag out in the rain, with nothing more than cardboard boxes between her and the pavement. She doesn’t want to disclose much information, but we will keep returning to talk to her, and to establish what has happened to encourage her into some temporary housing, however long this takes.

Piotr is 37 and he was initially resistant to engaging with any Street Outreach services, and seemed to be intoxicated on several occasions. The people we encounter can often be distrustful of services, as they have felt let down in the past. Our role is to get to know people, what has brought them here, and initiate a working relationship, so that they start to understand that we’re here to help. In Piotr’s case, he has now opened up to us, after many weeks of stopping in the street to talk to him. He told us that he came to the UK to work last year, only to find himself working 12 hours a day for less than £2 an hour on a building site. He was threatened and locked into a cellar room with minimal food every night until he escaped, and was found by us hiding in central London. He is now being supported to return home to his family.

For these people, and so many others, we work towards a route off the streets through The Connection’s services. We’ll find emergency accommodation and longer term housing, as well as access to healthcare, support for enduring mental health problems, and the treatment and counselling to recover from dependencies on alcohol or drugs.

We often hear that homelessness is self-inflicted. That is a matter of opinion, but from my own experience of over 20 years, the reality is far more complex. There are vulnerable people from across the world, for whom one thing, or a series of things have gone catastrophically wrong, leading to them sleeping rough on the streets of London. I am motivated to go to work every day because if we can help even a single person off the streets, then it is a job worth doing.

An interview with Dorothee (pictured on the left) . Dorothee had been working as a school cleaner but wasn’t able to get enough hours work to pay rent in London. She was living on the streets for over three years when a street outreach worker from the Connection encouraged her to come in to the centre. The violence Dorothee encountered on the streets left her traumatised and completely destroyed her trust in people. Dorothee is pictured with Cordelia, Deputy Manager Employment, Training and Education (at the Connection).

The Radio 4 Christmas Appeal funds 25% of the vital work done by The Connection at St Martin's in central London, and 100% of the emergency grants given by the Vicars Relief fund to help people around the country get a safe place to live.

We want to increase our public service role. We just want to do it creatively, rather than as box-ticking

2017-09-13T10:54:05+00:00

BBC Radio 4 is special. It’s part of my daily life – as it is for millions up and down the country.

From Today and The Archers to Start The Week, Moral Maze, Life Scientific, The Infinite Monkey Cage, In Our Time and our new history show When Greeks Flew Kites, it’s distinctive and high quality to the core. Indeed, just last month the Telegraph declared our adaptation of Midnight’s Children as the radio drama of the year.

Add it to the mesmerising line-up of The Proms on Radio 3, 5Live’s distinctive perspective on the news and Asian Network comedy, or the vital role in breaking and developing new talent played by 1Xtra, Radio 1, Radio 2 and 6Music. And we do more to bring the broadest possible range of music to audiences than anyone else, whether it’s through BBC Introducing, Ten Pieces or our jazz and world music programming. It just goes to show why BBC Radio is one of our nation’s crown jewels.

Public service has always been at the core of BBC Radio and always will be.

So I couldn’t help but splutter over my cereal when I saw the headline in the Daily Telegraph reporting that the BBC has [won] a “battle to ease [its] public service role”.

I was listening to the Radio 1 Breakfast Show at the time, as they discussed social media and mental health as well as the EU Repeal Bill to an audience of 6 million.

Far from wanting to ease our public service role, we want to increase it. We just want to do it in a creative way, rather than as a box-ticking exercise.

Last year we were granted a new, 11-year charter at the end of a long debate about the future of the BBC in which we said we wanted to create an even more distinctive BBC. That’s a challenge – we already start from a high base. Don’t just take our word for it – Ofcom’s own research found that our stations are seen as distinctive, including in their range of music.

It’s a challenge we’re committed to meeting. But we will do so through creative decisions by programme makers first, with review by Ofcom second – and action if we fail.

This is how the BBC’s new regulatory system has been designed. It requires the BBC to put forward creative plans every year. We did this in July. For Radio 4, we set out that it will continue to be a station unique for the breadth and quality of its content, with authoritative news and current affairs at its heart as well as an unparalleled range and depth of programmes including science, religion, culture, history, ideas, drama and comedy, through regular strands, documentaries and special commissions.

Earlier this year, Ofcom also published a draft operating licence setting out the requirements it will demand from us. Since then it has been consulting and we don’t yet know what Ofcom’s final requirements will be.

And Ofcom will then review our performance against that licence each year and as a powerful, independent regulator has more teeth than ever before to hold us to account.

Judging us by outcomes – the quality and distinctiveness of our programmes, the diversity of our services and audiences – rather than setting overly prescriptive quotas is the best way to ensure audiences get truly outstanding radio.

But it’s important not to confuse changes to the way the BBC is regulated with a shift in our editorial ambition, or our commitment to public service broadcasting. We want to do more, not less.

We take great care, and pride, in creating world class distinctive radio programmes and moments, tailored to the different audiences we serve.

Radio 4 does not broadcast a rich mix of distinctive programmes from drama to history, arts, comedy, religion and science because it has been told to do so in a regulatory document. We do so as because that is why the BBC exists. There are no plans to change the balance or range of content we feature on Radio 4, regardless of what Ofcom decides.

We are completely committed to achieving the goals set by the BBC’s new Charter. But judge us through the quality and distinctiveness of the programmes and services we produce – rather than inputs and regulatory frameworks. That way we’ll safeguard the jewel in the crown.

James Purnell is Director, Radio & Education at the BBC.

This article was originally published in the Telegraph and on Medium.

Seventy years of Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour

2016-10-07T09:00:00+00:00

Olive Shapley interviews Mrs Eleanor Roosevelt for Woman's Hour, 1951

Seventy years ago today a great British institution was established. At 2pm on 7 October 1946 the first edition of Woman’s Hour graced the airwaves on the BBC’s Light Programme, 2pm being the hour it was deemed women would have finished the majority of their housework, and therefore have a moment for a cuppa before the kids got home.

The originally-billed programme "that offers a female perspective on the world” was originally presented by a man - Alan Ivimey - listed in the Radio Times as a specialist "in writing for and talking to women."

Early segments like "how to hang your husband’s suit" didn't go down well with listeners who found the programme at times patronising. But, the programme still addressed serious issues. When the word “vagina” was used in the programme's first year in a talk about women’s health there was an outcry from the public. Birth canal was the favoured term for a number of years afterwards.

The programme became part of the Radio 4 schedule in 1973. Following Ivimey’s tenure as presented, the programme has been fronted by women including Violet Carson, Olive Sharpley, Jean Metcalfe and Marjorie Anderson. In 1990 the time slot was changed to its current morning slot (10-11am on weekdays) and the drama serial feature was added.

Sue MacGregor interviews Margaret Thatcher for Woman's Hour, 1985

The 'magazine' format of Woman's Hour has, right from the outset, featured cooking segments. Currently titled “Cook the Perfect…” chefs including Gordon Ramsay, Angela Hartnett and Rick Stein have featured. Political guests have also been a staple part of the line-up including Eleanor Roosevelt, Nancy Astor, Vera Brittain, Margaret Thatcher, Hillary Clinton, Cherie Blair, Tony Blair, Michael Howard, Gordon Brown and David Cameron.

Martha Kearney interviews Hilary Clinton for Woman's Hour, 2003

The Woman’s Hour Power List which started in 2013 as a list of the 100 most powerful women in the UK - has since evolved into a list of Game Changers in 2014 and Influencers in 2015.

The show’s current presenters are Jenni Murray and Jane Garvey. Today the programme has six shows a week, Monday to Friday from 10-11am and Saturdays from 5-5pm, and attracts 3.7m listeners weekly. And it's not just men listening either. Many of the subjects featured on the programme have universal appeal. Currently, the gender split of listeners is 40/60 male/female. What’s more, 25% under the age of 35, which is higher than average for Radio 4.

The Woman's Hour podcast has 1m downloads per month making it the second most popular daily podcast across all BBC radio after The Archers.

We spoke to presenter Jenni Murray for a blog Radio, Power and Woman's Hour last year. In it she revealed what keeps her excited about the show – which she has been presenting for 29 years:

"I grew up with Woman’s Hour. My mother used to have very strict feeding routines for me, and they coincided with Woman’s Hour. So we would listen to it together. If there were any parts that included a health warning she’d send me into the kitchen – to put on the kettle or get something. So it’s always been a part of my life.

"My first time in the studio presenting it was incredible because I’d heard over the years 'Woman’s Hour presented by Sue MacGregor'. So the first time they said 'Woman’s Hour presented by Jenni Murray' I got very excited. And people will think I’m silly but I still get that same excited feeling every time I hear those words. It’s a wonderful job, I’ve always loved broadcasting, I’ve presented some TV programmes and written books, but I feel most at home in a radio studio so I feel very, very lucky.”

Find out more about Woman’s Hour
Read Jenni Murray’s blog Radio, Power and Womans Hour
Listen to an early Woman’s Hour broadcast

Happy birthday FOOC

2016-10-04T08:30:00+00:00

When I was growing up I thought radio was all about music. Then I met the person who I was one day to marry and he introduced me to the joys of Radio 4. One of the first programmes I listened to religiously was From Our Own Correspondent (FOOC) - a weekly half hour set of dispatches from BBC Correspondents anywhere in the world with an interesting story to tell.

So when I saw it was FOOC's anniversary this month (albeit not a significant one) I got excited: a great chance to share some of my favourite stories and celebrate the wonder that is FOOC.

One of the longest running shows on the airwaves alongside The Archers and Desert Island Discs, the programme goes out in two versions a week - one on Radio 4 the other on the World Service.

A regular correspondent on the programme, Bridget Kendall, explained the appeal of the programme for the journalists who contribute in an article in the Guardian in 2005 celebrating the 50th anniversary of the programme:

"The reason why we like doing it is because FOOC allows you to say things you can't say anywhere else...You can write what you like, devising a tale as you hear it in your head, writing as you would tell it to a friend; in other words, an old-fashioned radio talk."

One of the dispatches that stands out in my recent listening was by Tim Whewell - Saving Gaza's Grand Piano - and it would interest anyone with a feeling for music or who has tinkled the ivories before. You can hear it below.

From Our Own Correspondent extract - Saving Gaza's Grand Piano from Tim Whewell: Gaza 2015

There's another dispatch, this time from 2014, which has stayed with me. It is from Alan Johnston in Italy and he talks about record numbers of desperate migrants sailing to Italy, many of whom don't survive. Johnston's piece came at the time when awareness was slowly growing about the so-called 'migrant crisis' and of course it is a story that is, sadly, ever-present in the news at the moment.

You can listen to Johnston's dispatch, A Deadly Passage To Italy, on the FOOC website.

In last year's 60th celebrations FOOC published clips of 12 significant dispatches. I'm in the process of catching up with those but there's one I know very well as it resonated strongly as my other half: Fergal Keane's Letter to Daniel.

One of the most-requested FOOCs it was broadcast in 1996. You can hear it below.

From Our Own Correspondent extract - Letter to Daniel from Fergal Keane: Hong Kong 1996

In it, Keane writes from Hong Kong to his new-born baby, and he distills the essence of a brilliant FOOC dispatch, the personal (what could be more personal than the birth of your child) and political - he recalls with great pain the children of poverty and conflict he has met in his time as a correspondent.

That combination of the personal and political goes some way towards explaining why I love FOOC so much. I was brought up abroad and watched my mum spend hours at her writing desk penning letters home, so the idea of all these correspondents composing audio messages that are broadcast all over the world on the World Service as well as at home in the UK on Radio 4 has a sort of romantic nostalgia for me.

But it is also because FOOC is more than the 'News', it gets behind the news to stories we might never hear, stories that are human and personal. Long may it continue. Happy birthday FOOC. Never change.

Listen to 12 memorable FOOC dispatches
Visit the FOOC website
Subscribe to the FOOC podcast

The Kraken Wakes up all over the BBC

2016-05-26T09:53:49+00:00

In 2016 for BBC’s Dangerous Visions Sci-Fi season, Val McDermid has adapted John Wyndham’s The Kraken Wakes. Val, widely known for her crime novels, had been a fan of Wyndham since her teens and together we pitched to produce what Val initially thought would be ‘a quiet little radio drama’.

The Kraken Wakes is an apocalyptical tale of alien arrivals who inhabit the sea and, when humans fight back, flood the world. There’s nothing quiet about it. When Val decided to create a contemporary retelling of this prophetic allegory for global warming, the production became epic.

If you don’t ask, you don’t get

Of course, for an epic story on radio you need an epic sound world. So I approached composer Alan Edward Williams to discuss the music having previously worked together on Maxine Peake’s drama Queens of the Coal Age. Alan felt the drama needed an orchestra to cope with something on the scale of The Kraken Wakes. Hmm. Tricky. He pointed out the logistics for the whole of the Philharmonic orchestra to perform a scored two hours of Radio Drama was surely beyond our means. So suggested we instead have just a couple of players. Proving if you don’t ask, you don’t get.

Simon Webb, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra General Manager, has a history of taking on exciting projects that reach the parts other orchestras don’t reach. Mutual appreciation of the novel, Val’s writing and Alan’s previous work allowed us to shape a project together. “If we were going to do it,” said Simon to me, “wouldn't it be exciting to do it live?” For the orchestra maybe, but for radio drama? As it turned out, radio drama commissioner Jeremy Howe was game.

A different kind of production

The process was different too. Before even embarking on the script Alan, Val and I met. The music was to be such a big part of the storytelling, it even took on some of the characters. For Alan the unseen Kraken was the subtext in an unspoken alien world. The band was also the catastrophic global devastation depicted in big set pieces: Sea Tanks grinding up the beach, tentacles grabbing people into balls of humanity; flooding.

With little time, Alan composed the score to the drama between 4.30am and 7am for 4 months around his work and family and Val wrote the script in just a few weeks. Meanwhile, I was also working with BBC R&D on object-based explorations of storytelling in drama and comedy.

Kraken was an opportunity to work with the BBC’s Research and Development to promote the drama using different technologies. Connected Studios and BBC R&D worked with my indie company Savvy, filming the event to create an interactive trailer. We also worked together to create a 360 short presenting viewers in VR headsets or on Youtube 360 with scientific data of global flooding by polar ice caps melting. In these VR experiences we posed the question: ‘What would you do?’

The Live event

Richard Harrington, Paul Higgins and Tamsin Greig rehearse with BBC Philharmonic Orchestra

While the devastating Christmas floods made the drama ever more prescient, in early January we brought the actors together for two days to block and rehearse to the music. Having the orchestra to rehearse with was not practical, so we timed their words to a Sibelius MIDI track.

Our ‘tech week’ with the orchestra was a 90-minute slot that meant we’d never rehearsed the whole thing with actors and orchestra together. But don’t underestimate the power of orchestral players to bring some electricity into proceedings.

We watched the audience’s faces in the Philharmonic Studio at Media City as Episode 1 climaxed with the sci-fi inspired music Alan had composed. My 8 year old described it excitedly as ‘too scary’. A totally exhilarating experience - I hope audiences at home have a similarly dramatic reaction.

Justine Potter is Producer/Director of the adaptation of The Kraken Wakes.

Episode 1 of The Kraken Wakes will be broadcast on Radio 4 on Saturday 28 May at 2.30pm, with Episode 2 airing at the same time the following Saturday (4 Jun).
Watch a trailer for Episode 1 featuring the cast and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra.
Find out more about the 2016 Dangerous Visions season on the BBC.

Food and Farming Awards

2016-04-29T14:21:04+00:00

Sheila Dillon and Yotam Ottolenghi host the BBC Food and Farming Awards 2016

Dan Saladino tells us what motivates him to work on The Food Programme and why, in its 16th year, the BBC Food & farming Awards are more important than ever.

Sometimes I feel my early years were meant to be my grounding, my preparation to work on the BBC Food & Farming Awards. My father arrived in Bristol in the 1960s from Sicily and spent his entire working life in food. I spent a lot of my school holidays sitting at the back of restaurants watching chefs. During these holidays I’d also visit relatives in Sicily and spent time on farms surrounded by grapes, olives, oranges and almonds. Meals there would be loud family gatherings around the table. I guess the most powerful memories I have from childhood involve food. From that early experience I also got to understand what it takes to produce and prepare great food. The patience, skill and sheer hard work that goes into making something delicious, nutritious and memorable. That’s what we also see each year in our Awards.

They also tell a story and provide people with inspirations insights into what goes on behind the scenes of a food business, food production and farming. As well as our weekly editions of The Food Programme, the Awards are also designed to counter another problem I’m aware of; a lack of information and in depth storytelling about food. That’s a big motivation for all of us who work on The Food Programme and the Awards.

Each day all of us have to make decisions about what to put into our bodies. As a nation we buy more cook books, watch more television programmes about food and go out to restaurants more than our parents did. However I’m not convinced we all know as much as we need to about how our food is produced, what the consequences of our buying decisions are and what impact any particular food has on our bodies. Life is so busy and often we have to make tough economic choices about food, but knowledge is power and we all deserve to know more about what we are eating. Curiosity and asking questions is essential when it comes to food.

The Food Programme’s mission statement is “Investigating every aspect of the food we eat” and that pretty much sums it up. The founding presenter Derek Cooper who created the programme in 1979 wanted to open up to the audience the world in which our food is produced, to reveal things we need to know as consumers and celebrate the foods and drinks that give us pleasure. We still do that, in recent times we’ve investigated the horse meat scandal, looked into intensive poultry production and explored the food issues around the Syrian conflict.

In 2000 The Food Programme wanted to mark its 20th anniversary of being on air. The Food Programme was one of the few places people working in school food or public health, or pioneering chefs and farmers received recognition and the so The Food and Farming Awards were created to ensure they had a dedicated national platform for their stories to be told. They’ve continued to do that ever since and we’ve added to the categories to reflect new trends and the rise of different food businesses.

Winners from Charcutier Ltd (Best Food Producer) with Yotam Ottolenghi and Ken Hom

It takes a lot of work to feed a school full of kids well, or to make a great cheese or turn up in the rain to sell fresh and delicious food at a market. Our lives would be a lot poorer, the world a duller place and our economy less diverse without these producers or food figures. We know that by shining some light on great work – that can also help spread ideas and inspire other people to act.

The issues we face around food are bigger than we’ve faced before (just think obesity or food poverty) and for that reason I think people look to the awards as a way of having a national conversation about food and drink and what matters to them.

At our Awards ceremony in Bristol last night those conversations were certainly flowing. Bristol is the perfect backdrop for an awards ceremony celebrating excitement and innovation around food. Not only is it where we make The Food Programme, it’s a dynamic city full of people with lots of new ideas. I grew up in Bristol in the 1970s and 80s. It already had a great grass roots food scene but it has exploded in recent years. It’s a place that accepts new ideas and is a great place for new businesses to take off (think of the restaurants, streetfood businesses and bakeries the city has seen in the last five years alone). Also (and I know this from my own background) it has a rich diversity that has brought lots of different cuisines and flavours to the city.

This year we have a new category called The Future Food Award. It’s been designed to highlight the ideas and work taking place behind the scenes in some of the UK’s bigger food operations. We wanted our judges to find the food and drink ideas that could be making a difference in five or ten years’ time. The award went to a dairy farming family in Sheffield who’s found an innovative way of surviving in the milk business.

The 'Our Cow Molly' farm in Sheffield

They understood that few of us get to taste truly fresh milk (in the larger national supply chains, it can take days to work it’s way through to the consumer). One day they handed a fresh litre of milk to a coffee shop in the city. They received a call within an hour from a barista who explained he hadn’t been able to make a cup of coffee as good as the one he’d made with the Our Cow Molly milk (that’s their brand name by the way). From that experience, they’ve set up a processing business selling their super fresh “Made in Sheffield” milk.

Future Food winners Our Cow Molly with Angela Hartnett (second left)

When I watched them take to the stage at the awards ceremony last night it was moving, a feeling I get to experience each year at the awards; watching someone who does important work each day, who receives little recognition from the wider-world, who is creating something important, yet finally receiving applause and recognition. On stage Sheila asked them if other farmers had approached them to find out if they can also adopt the model. Since we started telling their story as part of the awards process, they explained, more and more people are discovering their approach to the tough business of dairy farming, and perhaps through these awards many will be inspired to work in a different way. That’s why I think the awards are special. They not only change businesses, I genuinely believe they change lives.

The BBC Food & Farming Awards were presented in Bristol on Thursday 28 April.
On Sunday 1 May at 12.30pm, the BBC Radio 4 Food Programme will broadcast the first of a two-part special about the Food & Farming Awards. A special highlights package recorded at the awards ceremony will also be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Monday 2 May at 3.30pm.

Pay attention to homelessness this Christmas

2015-12-07T12:45:50+00:00

Yesterday saw the start of this year’s Radio 4 Christmas Appeal with St Martin-in-the-Fields. In this post, Radio 4 producer Kate Howells explains how the appeal started and how this year's broadcast was produced.

The relationship between BBC Radio and St Martin-in-the-Fields goes back a remarkably long way with St Martin’s broadcasting a radio Christmas Appeal for its work with homeless people for 89 years, although I have been the Radio 4 producer of the appeal for just the last three.

While the nature and extent of homelessness may have changed in that time, the causes are similar: relationship breakdown, job loss, mental illness or a toxic combination of several.

Glen, who I met at the Connection at St Martin’s, put it vividly. He said: "Within one month, I lost my dad - who was very close to me, my marriage broke down and I was made redundant. It’s like standing in the middle of a roundabout and getting hit from every side."

It’s talking to people like Glen which shows that it really can happen to anyone. And that everyone it has happened to needs patient, expert, long-term help to get out of it. And that’s what the Connection at St Martin’s provides.

It’s a day centre and night shelter for homeless people at the side of Trafalgar Square, next to the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields.

Half of the money raised each year by the Radio 4 Christmas Appeal goes towards the work of the Connection, which starts with the Outreach Team who go out into the streets and talk to homeless people.

They can talk to someone over months or even years before winning their trust and persuading them to come in to the centre to have their needs assessed. Homeless people have often lost their faith in other human beings so this takes skill and patience as well as time.

Dennis, who I met at the Connection, acknowledges that distrust and suspicion made him very difficult to deal with: "In the back of my mind I was thinking 'what do they want from me?' It took me a long time to realise that they didn’t want anything from me, other than for me to go away, but to go away in a nice way."

After sleeping rough on and off for six years, Dennis was given help at the Connection to find suitable housing and he now has his own flat.

"This place lives up to its name, Connections. It’s building bridges…it helps people feel not alone. That there is somebody out there who loves them, and sometimes it’s not easy because we’re quite stubborn really!" said Dennis.

Once people come to the Connection, there’s warm food and showers and washing machines. Kaz is one of the Deputy Day Centre Managers and she stresses it’s not a place of inertia.

She said the aim is to help people move on from homelessness: "Nobody just sits and gets ignored, or can hide. This is a place of action, it’s about helping people move on in their lives."

Dennis took part in the Step Up volunteering programme, working in the kitchen where he rediscovered a great talent for baking.

What’s really struck me is the way this place reconnects people to the talents and interests they had before homelessness. Charities over-use the phrase 'rebuilding lives', but here I’ve seen it in action.

One misapprehension Radio 4 listeners sometimes have is that money they donate will only benefit homeless people in London.

This is far from the truth, because half of the donations go to the Vicar’s Relief Fund, (VRF) St Martin’s other charity. This enables crisis grants of up to £250 to be given to people round the country who are homeless or who are in danger of homelessness.

The Revd Dr Sam Wells, the Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, explained: "They may find no-one is prepared to give them a flat because they can’t put down a deposit. Well we can help with that. If their support worker calls us and says a £200 deposit on a flat would make all the difference, we trust them.

"Where else are they going to get that £200 from?

"They’re not going to get a flat and if you don’t get the first foot on the ladder, you could get nowhere. The VRF is about bridging gaps between good intentions of people involved in the system, and the understandable scepticism of a landlord who has been let down before."

What makes it so precious is that the grant applications, which are made by housing and social workers on behalf of their vulnerable clients, can usually be turned round with 36 hours. With a grant from the Vicar’s Relief Fund, Ian had just moved into a flat in Morecambe when we visited him.

"The burden of the last three years feels like it’s been lifted," explains Ian. "I’ve got something back which I’d lost, a bit of a purpose. I still feel like I’ve got something to give. I’m only 55, I don’t feel that it’s over…I’ve really got a chance to start again, and I will."

The theme of this year’s Christmas Appeal is Pay Attention.

The words come from the French philosopher and political activist Simone Weil, who wrote that those who are unhappy have no need for anything in this world, but people capable of giving them their attention… Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.

Sam Wells says we don’t all have the time and skill to give homeless people the attention they need. St Martin’s does.

So do pay attention to the Radio 4 Christmas Appeal this year, and to homeless people.

BBC Radio 4's 'We British: An Epic in Poetry'' on National Poetry Day

2015-10-06T09:11:00+00:00

'Waiting for a poetry reading in a Washington bookstore' taken and published by J Brew on Flickr.

Arts and Poetry Editor James Cook introduces Radio 4's contribution to National Poetry Day later this week.

I know lots of people don’t like poetry (or at least find it boring, confusing, a bit serious and occasionally terrible) but I implore you to stay with me. Poets are warm and funny, rude and angry, scared, lustful, political, annoyed, quizzical, devout, profane – in others words they are a bit like us.

I’m the Arts and Poetry Editor at Radio 4, I look after a small (but perfectly formed) poetry unit in Bristol and, unsurprisingly, I’ve always loved poems. I like the way poems hang around and in my head (scraps of lines never whole ones), beguiling me with their beauty or the way some person, across 400 years or more, seems to know exactly how I feel.

And I’ve always thought that poems could tell the story of Britain – from the earliest verses written on these islands to the latest. A different story to the one we’re taught in school, more intimate, funnier, with more gossip, more honesty and in many more voices.

When I said all this to my commissioning editor, Tony Phillips, I didn’t really expect him to take it seriously. But, he did. And so here I am staring at an enormous whiteboard covered in post it notes with ten days go until we’re on air. I’m four fifths excited and one fifth terrified which feels about right.

So what are we doing? Well, over six hours on Radio 4 we’re going to tell the story of Britain in poems – from the 700s to the present day. Andrew Marr is presenting and we’re going to weave in and out of the Radio 4 schedule like a gossipy, sinewy river of words, kicking off a huge pan-BBC season of poetry called Contains Strong Language.

We British preview: The specially-crafted 'Frankenpoem' . How many famous poems do you recognise?

But which poems, whose poems and, firstly, why poems?

Because poems reveal a history of human experience, they tell us what it was like to be alive in Tudor England or Victorian Scotland. They are good documents to an age because poets admit things that other people do not. They say things anew and are often on the cusp of new ways of thinking, new emotions, experimental ways of living. So poetry tells a uniquely intimate history.

But poetry is also the place where we laid down the first stirrings of our national identities, of the really big stories we tell ourselves about Scotland and England, Ireland and Wales.

The challenge is immense – trying to find a way of telling this story that is fair to all the poetic brilliance of our history; that feels like a collective story and yet accounts for the huge diversity in this country both past and present. There’s so much good stuff we’re going to leave out; so many voices that we cannot include. But we’ve made a big declaration so we’ve got to find a way to tell it.

One way to do this, a brilliant way, is to ask Andrew Marr whose grasp of history is profound and passion for poetry immense.

As a result, Andrew and a team of brilliant producers and I have been saying things like ‘but if we have the Rossetti we can’t have the Tennyson’, horse-trading our literary history for the sake of a good story. And it really is a good story; it’s the collective experience of the people who have lived on these islands – of war, invasion, religious change, science and innovation, empire and trade, oppression and class, And the poets have been there all along, writing, chronicling, confessing and describing.

I hope you can join us on the day.

James Cook is Arts and Poetry Editor, Radio 4

We British: An Epic In Poetry is on National Poetry Day throughout Thursday 8th October starting with Foundation Stones presented by Andrew Marr at 9.00am.
Poet Murray Lachlan-Young will present The People's Shipping Forecast using submissions made by listeners via Twitter, Facebook and email on Thursday 8 October. For more information on how to take part, visit the Radio 4 website.

The picture at the top of this post was taken and published by J Brew on Flickr. We've used it in accordance with the Creative Commons Licence.

50 years of World at One

2015-10-04T10:08:48+00:00

Martha Kearny

It was the brainchild of BBC Home Service controller Gerard Mansell who stuck his neck out by moving the immovable, The Archers and Desert Island Discs, to make way for a “crowd of buccaneers”.

1965 was a time of change and the BBC needed to reflect that. I can’t see a controller daring to do that now, but Mansell’s risk paid off. It swiftly found appreciation amongst listeners and gained a big audience.

He wrote that “Many regarded it as brash and dangerously outspoken. William Hardcastle broke all the accepted rules of broadcasting. He breathed heavily at the microphone, he stumbled over his script and addressed himself to the most powerful in the land with unaccustomed directness and no hint of deference.”

One of the programmes first reporters Sue MacGregor told me once that he famously got his own name wrong by announcing portentously "This is William Whitelaw with The World at One". While Jim Naughtie likes to retell a fond tribute about how his red jersey was left on his chair after he died and subsequent editors would wear it like the yellow jersey in the Tour de France.

William Hardcastle interviews Richard Dimbleby about his career at the BBC, how he prepares before a state visit and his attitude towards royalty, 23rd December 1965.

We believe that first day’s coverage included Ian Smith arriving in London for talks on Rhodesian independence; the Pope addressing the United Nations and apparently the Prime Minister Harold Wilson had rebuked the BBC over ‘some upstart young television journalist called Day’. Robin Day of course went on to present The World at One. When he arrived for the morning meetings the first thing he did when he sat down was to set a packet of cigarettes on one side and cigars on the other and from that moment he smoked and chewed on both until he signed off.

Though my predecessors made it seem effortless, presenting can be a terrifying experience. I was a huge fan of Nick Clarke whose polite, yet incisive, probing of politicians should be a model for all interviewers. I was cheered to learn even he lost his cool during one Outside Broadcast from a party conference when his item was drowned out by a nearby Beatles tribute band. As Nick got more and more incensed, the story goes that the band started to play All You Need is Love.

William Hardcastle

From the outset the programme had a formidable line-up of reporters. Over the years this has included Nick Ross, Jonathan Dimbleby and Sue MacGregor. The programme was one of the first to send reporters out to do vox pops. Something that landed Sue in trouble when she was banned from Sainsbury’s for waylaying the customers.
As ever it is the editor who shapes the personality of the programme. Andrew Boyle was the “maverick genius” who exposed Anthony Blunt as a Russian spy. I know how much I rely on my current editor Nick Sutton whose calm and incisive intelligence is a bedrock as the morning pandemonium reigns around.

That sense of chaos exists because there is so little time to get the programme on air. Whoever is editing gets in around 6am. I cycle in for 7.30am and our morning meeting begins at 8.30am. Jim Naughtie describes that meeting as: “a collective reading of the papers and grunt at each other over coffee”. After that we chase eight or nine stories which get narrowed to five or six depending on which guests we get and how stories develop. Our producers not only set up guests, but they edit all the interviews too. Nowadays it’s done digitally and not with the razor blades and tape used when I first started.

Breaking news is always welcome, though the closer to going on air the hairier it can be. I recall one morning at around ten minutes to one spotting on the newswires that Baroness Thatcher had died. With cold drops of sweat running down my spine all hell broke loose as we rushed to confirm the news before broadcast. Nothing was in place as I made my way into the studio. Somehow the producers found the obituary tape and tracked down a fitting range of guests. There was no time for scripts so instructions were constantly shouted through my headphones.

In my early days I just couldn’t believe how hectic it all was – even after years on Newsnight. The worst, and funniest, moment was when I was still at my desk and heard the one o’clock pips sounding, the signal for me to begin speaking in the studio. My heart nearly stopped…until I spotted Eddie Mair grinning away. He had played a practical joke, which became a regular occurrence until I learned not to leap up panic stricken from my chair.

Many famous journalists have come through the ranks of The World at One. In 1982 Kirsty Wark was a producer on the desk. Her editor was Jenny Abramsky and Tony Hall, the Director General now, was her deputy. Back then she learned so much not only about the craft of production, but a crafty brew too. She told me “There was a mini fridge in the corner of the WATO office – near the coffee machine – but there was also a bottle of whisky out of view, and a few seasoned members of the team – neither Jenny nor Tony I hasten to add - used to lace their morning coffee and or Coca Cola with a little stiffener…oh how the programme has changed.”

Every birthday celebration needs a cake. WATO's 50th birthday cake was made by Bake Off competitor Paul Jagger.

In fifty years the programme has evolved. You’re more likely to find a batch of homemade cakes or biscuits than a bottle of Scotch now. The best innovation has been the extension to 45 minutes, which has means we can cover a much wider range of stories for our loyal audience.

Looking back over all those years of The World at One, we decided to do an anniversary series that celebrates the best of Britain. News by and large covers the more depressing aspects of life from natural disasters and war, to political arguments and economic problems. Former Cabinet minister Peter Walker once called us “The World at Glum”. So it has been uplifting to report on more positive stories. We have had nominations from David Cameron (universities and science) Ed Miliband (the NHS) and Nigel Farage (the law) as well as Jude Law on theatre. Alan Bennett notoriously picked hypocrisy as what the English excelled at. We have reported excellence in cancer research and computer games, the Premier League and fashion. My favourites have come from our listeners who sent me cycling around the Manchester velodrome and to a nature reserve for a spot of biological recording where I was greeted with these words “There are 48 varieties of slug which is 47 more than most people realise.”

Our listeners can very kind – I was sent lots of cards after I revealed my allergy to bees – but make a grammatical mistake and you will be ripped to shreds. Thankfully I haven’t suffered the fate of Jim Naughtie. When he first arrived he was informed by some listeners, unhappy with his Scottish accent, that he didn’t know how to pronounce his own name!

So in a world of 24 hour news, twitter and a bewildering fast changing media, how has a fifty year old programme remained so popular? Our audiences are 1.5 million every day.

We pride ourselves on our news breaking interviews and agenda setting analysis. Some programmes may preview and others may reflect on the day’s news, but The World at One is at the heart of what’s happening. Most of all I think that independent streak, which was the guiding light of the early years, has stubbornly persisted and been the impetus for our journalism.

Radio, Power and Woman's Hour

2015-07-01T08:00:00+00:00

As this year's Woman's Hour Power List of 'influencers' is announced, Jenni Murray - who has been at he helm of the Radio 4 programme for 28 years, reveals why her job is as exciting today as ever and explains why the Power List is important.

You've been 28 years in the presenter's seat for Woman's Hour - clearly it's a satisfying job - what about it keeps you excited?

I grew up with Woman’s Hour. My mother used to have very strict feeding routines for me, and they coincided with Woman’s Hour. So we would listen to it together. If there were any parts that included a health warning she’d send me into the kitchen – to put on the kettle or get something. So it’s always been a part of my life.

My first time in the studio presenting it was incredible, because I’d heard over the years “Woman’s Hour presented by Sue MacGregor”. So the first time they said “Woman’s Hour presented by Jenni Murray” I got very excited. And people will think I’m silly but I still get that same excited feeling every time I hear those words. It’s a wonderful job, I’ve always loved broadcasting, I’ve presented some TV programmes and written books, but I feel most at home in a radio studio so I feel very, very lucky.

Why do you think that in the digital age spoken work radio is still important to people?

I think it’s because it’s a guilt free pleasure. You can have a radio in every room in the house and not feel bad about that – it’s not extravagant. And when you listen to it you get a bit of everything, some more serious topics and other, lighter things. Right now I’m sat with my iPad, my coffee and my computer, I’m researching my new book at the moment, and all the time I have my radio on in the background. It’s always on whatever I’m doing, whether I’m cooking or working or throwing the ball to the dogs. And it always educates, informs and entertains.

People will think I’m mad but when I go out to work I leave the radio on for my dogs… I always think they’ll hear my voice when Woman’s Hour comes on and know it’s me.

What has been your favourite piece on Woman's Hour?

Well, I’ve interviewed some incredible people: Hilary Clinton, Theresa May, the home secretary - but no one would believe me if I said anyone but George Clooney.

I’m a huge fan of his, ever since he was in ER – I watched every episode, and I’ve wanted to interview him for years. Then suddenly two weeks ago I got a call from the office saying, “Are you free on Monday?” – I wasn’t actually, I had a hospital appointment, so I said I couldn’t go in. “That’s a shame,” they said, “because we’ve organised a meeting for you with George Clooney” – well you can imagine within two minutes I was on the phone to the hospital rearranging my appointment.

Jenni Murray meets George Clooney

So my team and I headed over to Claridges to meet him. And of course he’s gorgeous but he was also very open and answered all my questions intelligently. He has an incredible ability to look at you and make you feel like the only woman on the planet. That’s only ever happened to me once before – when I met Bill Clinton.

At the end of the interview I asked for a picture, for the website of course, and he agreed and asked if any of the rest of the crew would like to have a photo. But then, then he did something quite extraordinary, when our technician was clearing up he offered to help her. Never in all my years of interviewing has that ever happened before.

What about the most difficult interview?

It’s always very difficult when you are interviewing people who have had terrible experiences, like parents whose children have been killed. It’s a very fine line to tread – you need to ask the tough questions but be sensitive, it’s quite an important skill to acquire.

How did the Power List come about?

I can’t remember exactly how it started, but the initial list, in 2013, was 100 women who were in powerful positions. And HM the Queen was at the top. Then last time we decided to look at “game changers” and women who had really affected the world around them and of course Doreen Lawrence, whose son Stephen was murdered and who worked so hard to change the way people perceive racism, was at the top of that list.

This time we decided to think about influencers. There are so many people who influence us every day in ways we may not think about, there are people who influence everything we do - what we wear to work, what we eat – they might be chefs whose recipes we follow or even the supermarket buyers who decide what will be on the shelves. We wanted to consider these women and the effect they’ve had on our lives.

Why do we need the Power List in this 'post-feminist' age?

I hate the term ‘post feminism’ – what makes anyone think we are ‘post’ or beyond anything. Feminism is more vital today than ever – just look at campaigns like “Everyday sexism” and you can see why. In the Eighties feminism was a bit of a dirty word – we used to call it "the f word" - it had a negative connotation and women would say: “I’m not a feminist – but”…

Then a new generation got hold of feminism and reclaimed it, asking questions - why aren’t there more women in powerful political roles? Why isn’t there adequate childcare provision when I want to go back to work? Why are male counterparts paid more than me? And doing something about it – like Caroline Criado-Perez, who asked, “Why are there no women on British bank notes any more?” and started a campaign to make that right.

And what we’ve done on Woman’s Hour consistently is chart and explore that relationship between women and society, to empower and educate and it’s what we will continue to do with every broadcast.

Jenni Murray is a presenter for Radio 4's Woman's Hour.

Find out more about the Power List on the Woman's Hour website
Read the press release on the Media Centre

Introducing the Home Front Story Explorer

2015-06-15T11:00:25+00:00

Jessica Dromgoole is Editor of Home Front, Radio 4's historical drama which spans the Great War. Here she explains how the programme is being used to launch the Home Front Story Explorer, an experimental online project on BBC Taster.

Home Front is a daily Radio 4 drama with a difference. It is a pithy and – I hope – delightful moment in a listener’s day. Each episode is set exactly one hundred years prior to broadcast, telling one fictional character’s story from that day with some genuine history thrown in too. Five characters’ stories are shared from Monday to Friday each week, with the collective played out each Friday evening as an omnibus.

Following the programme’s launch in August 2014, Paul Donovan of the Sunday Times wrote “Home Front is a poignant, quietly compulsive portrait of ordinary life a century ago, at once completely different and wholly recognisable”. We’re very proud of that, and what we’ve achieved with this programme so far, and hope to continue entertaining and educating our audience as the seasons pass.

Currently in Season 4, the project is planned to last 15 Seasons, a total of 600 episodes spanning the entire war, beginning on 4 August 1914 and ending on 9 November in 1918. We hope the sum of this work will be a partial account of ordinary people’s fortunes during the Great War.

Whilst the ambition is for the drama to feel organic; there are also strict timings to adhere to.

Each season is set in one place, and explores a different theme of the Great War. So far we have had the outbreak of war, the devastating slump in recruitment and the swathing industrial changes which followed. The current season touches upon profiteering and we’re currently working on Season 5, which charts the rise in spiritualism, and planning Season 6, looking at casualties and nursing.

I’ll forgive you if you haven’t quite kept up, but you can begin to get a sense of how big this project is.

Now consider staying on top of the family trees of EastEnders, or the last time there was a farming scandal in The Archers… Step forward BBC Research & Development (R&D).

Tracking information for programme makers has been an ongoing mission for the BBC Research and Development team. We were more than happy to be used as a guinea pig when they invited us to participate in an experimental online project which could not only go on to aid programme makers across the BBC, but also create something beautiful for Home Front listeners to delve in to.

Part of the Home Front Story Explorer homepage on BBC Taster

Via the Home Front Story Explorer our regular listeners, and we hope new listeners, can navigate their own way through the fortunes of characters, locations, storylines, and national, international and local history in multiple dimensions.

Whether you’re most interested in one character’s progress through the war, a location that you may know, or a particular narrative, now you can trace their stories like threads pulled from the fabric of the whole.

With illustrations by Ivan Allen, and text by journalist Nick Curtis, it’s easy to click through the progress of the Home Front narrative and listen only to the scenes that appeal. Links to small BBC features and blogs mean that the relevant historical research is also there at your fingertips.

The Home Front Story Explorer is an example of the work BBC R&D are doing to explore new experiences that become possible as programmes are increasingly delivered over the internet.

For us it’s an incredible resource for our writers. It’s more than just an easy reference to the story that’s gone before, with every detail easy to locate. It’s the mulch from which new stories can grow, and an inspiration to keep Home Front pithy and delightful. We hope our listeners enjoy using it as much as we do.

Jessica Dromgoole is Editor of Home Front

Home Front Story Explorer can be found on BBC Taster.
Home Front is broadcast on BBC Radio 4, 12.04pm Monday to Friday, and episodes are available to listen again on BBC iPlayer.

Radio 4's Listening Project: hear the secrets of private lives

2015-06-09T15:13:42+00:00

The Listening Project mobile recording booth

The Listening Project is a Radio 4 initiative that offers a snapshot of contemporary Britain, in which people across the UK volunteer to have a conversation with someone close to them about a subject they've never discussed intimately before. The conversations are gathered by teams of producers from local and national radio stations who facilitate each encounter. Every conversation - they're not BBC interviews, and that's an important difference - lasts up to an hour, and is then edited to extract the key moment of connection between the participants. Fi Glover writes about some of the stories which have featured in the series.

Rachael and Dawn are friends and both of them have children with special needs. Dawn has two sons and Rachael one daughter. They talk a lot anyway but came together to have a chat for The Listening Project about their kids. It was ear-raising stuff. As an interviewer, now quite long in the tooth, I’ve often talked to parents of kids with special needs, several interviews have been about sex. It’s a difficult area but one that needs better understanding. I’ve tried to ask questions in a non-prurient but inquisitive way – but essentially I’m a total stranger and no interview has ever elicited the understanding that Rachael and Dawn’s conversation has. Dawn’s teenage son has discovered “magazines with ladies in them” and is doing what teenage sons do with those magazines. “Private time” is what Dawn has taught him to call it. It’s a good name because, as Dawn says, she has had to explain that if he wants to do certain things it does have to be “on your own, in your bedroom, in the bathroom but with the door shut!” not while walking across the sitting room in the middle of the afternoon.

It’s a conversation that leaves you in no doubt as to how difficult life can be – but it’s also an uplifting chat about friendship, family values and getting on with life. There is an extraordinary moment when the two women talk about how they feel about the prospect of leaving their vulnerable children alone in the world when they themselves pass away. This testament of maternal love has stayed with me ever since I heard it.

I’m not telling you about Rachael and Dawn’s chat to sensationalise The Listening Project, but it exemplifies what we are about – the experiences we all have. More than 1,300 people have sat down with a person they love or care about and had a conversation that really matters. I’ve had the privilege of listening to most of them for the show we do every week at Radio 4. What I enjoy in particular is that there is no interviewer involved. It gives the conversations a different quality, but perhaps I should be worried about that …

Two mothers talk openly about the sexual awakening of their special needs teenagers.

“People telling their own stories” is quite definitely a trend – from established podcasts such as The Moth to open-mic storytelling nights. I know of four in my part of London alone. Do they reflect our growing ability to talk openly? Do they reflect a greater desire to listen? Or is it just a cry to be heard? Whatever it is, we are part of it, albeit in a very formal way. All of our chats go on to be stored in our sound archive at the British Library. That already contains end-of-life conversations, testaments of love, loss, living with wolves, wild swimming, cultural identities, illness and desire. We are essentially an audio dragnet of life – and this summer we have a mobile booth to make it even easier. It’s a gorgeous thing – the kind of caravan some Hackney hipster might turn up at a festival in: sleek, padded, fake fire, mini-bar fridge and humourous sayings on the walls. I can already feel that a little bit of magic will be created by placing a microphone in front of two people who can shut off the rest of the world for 40 minutes. You wouldn’t want to be on a “Spinal Tap” level 11 of chat all the time – but just occasionally it feels pretty good to burst through the meniscus of low-level conversation.

Brian did when he sat down to talk with Valerie: they have been married for more than 40 years but are now legally separated. Seventeen years ago, Brian had an accident at work that left him with severe head injuries, resulting in a frontal lobotomy. He had to give up his job and he took to drink. Their marriage didn’t survive all of that, but he and Valerie are on good enough terms to agree to our producer Andrew Carter’s suggestion that they have a conversation for the project. It is remarkable. They talk, without rancour, about everything they have been through. And there is an incredible moment where Brian finally says sorry. Sorry for all the trouble the drinking caused, all the trouble his “doggedness” (as he puts it) caused Valerie and the family. And a whole lifetime of dashed hopes, dreams, patience, anger – and love – can be heard in the pause before Valerie says: “Thank you Brian … I have been waiting for that for years.”

Everyone’s life is remarkable in some way. We all have a story to tell. I hope hundreds of people come to tell us theirs in the booth over the summer. I might end up doing one myself: “I used to interview people – but then they got too good at it themselves …”

This article first appeared on the Guardian website.

Fi Glover is the presenter of the Listening Project on BBC Radio 4

Listen to the live edition of Listening Project Live broadcast from the New Broadcasting House piazza on Tuesday 9 June 2015.
The Listening Project mobile recording booth is going on tour - find out when it's visiting a location near you on the Radio 4 website.
Most of the unedited conversations recorded for the Listening Project are being archived by the British Library Learn more about The Listening Project by visiting www.bbc.co.uk/listeningproject

Radio 4 and Artangel: working together to inspire art

2015-05-05T11:20:15+00:00

BBC Radio 4 and Artangel have recently collaborated and invited emerging British artists to pitch ideas for creative endeavours which explore the potential of space in bold and surprising ways. Some of their work will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Tony Phillips explains the thinking behind the collaboration.

As Commissioning Editor for Arts programmes at Radio 4, I help shape the sorts of arts and culture programmes we have on Radio 4.

That includes what we call 'strands' - programmes like The Film Programme, Open Book, Poetry Please and A Good Read. In addition to that I also commission about 200 arts documentaries a year. My role is commissioning programmes which help tell a story about the arts and creativity in Britain.

It's a varied story, but it was a story that changed a couple of years ago when the Radio 4 Controller Gwyneth Williams and I took a decision when we looked across a lot of programming and looked at arts programmes in particular. We felt that there wasn’t enough of the voice and the role of the artist in our output. Gwyneth made a statement of intent that she wanted Radio 4 to become a playground for artists. A place where artists could come and put themselves centre stage in the various telling of stories. Traditionally we would filter their views through a commentator or critic. We wanted to flip that and give the artist the opportunity to be centre stage - to explore things that they wanted to explore.

The end result is a change of tone. Traditional programmes like Front Row is where you'd find the critics or commentators, and they have a really important role to play on the network. You could argue that if those same commentators came on to make features and documentaries that there would be a certain amount of repetition. By using artists you create a more creative space and you change the angle by getting the perspective from the artist rather than the commentator. The result is a real tonal shift. You'll get a different insight from an artist sharing a personal perspective on the art. There is a different association with the art as a result.

The partnership between Radio 4 and Artangel came about because I had seen quite a lot of Artangel's work over the past decade. I knew that they were very successful and very influential commissioners of public art. There was a particular site-specific commission - A Room For London - where a house was designed and built on top of the Hayward Gallery. Part of the arrangement was that writers would be invited to spend time in the boat and have their work published. It got me thinking that maybe there was an opportunity for us to work together with Artangel and produce work for radio. I think there might be something in this, that there might be something worth pursuing. Artangel explained to me that they offered 'open commissions' every two years or so. They explained they were keen to work with Radio 4 and made there were opportunities for artists to come up with really exciting ideas. What we knew we would get with this was some association with the encouragement of public art in this country and the exciting prospect of commissioning art from sometimes unknown artists.

The fact that Radio 4 has been a partner has served as a point of intrigue for artists who have applied as part of the commissioning process. That wasn't a requirement though. But the happy the outcome is that two of the pieces would work very well on radio and one or two of them will definitely yield a supporting documentary explaining what it is or how it was made. There will be a life for these pieces of art on Radio 4.

The first piece you'll hear this month is a piece that is set in Portland, Dorset. A piece by an artist called Katrina Palmer. She has based herself for somewhere in the region of three to five months on an island off the Jurassic coast and she's telling a number of stories in and around the Dorset coastline, a coastline that dominates the location. Her interest was in the history of these quarries and the stories which exist around them. Her real fascination is about what was left behind when the stone was taken away, a kind of meditation on loss in the form of an audio walk for people visiting the location. What we'll hear on radio is a haunting tale of two sisters living on the island - The Quarryman's Daughters - late at night on Radio 4.

The notion of being surprised and transported into other areas and into other lives by other people. There's nothing quite like being interested in an idea and then being transported into a life. I think that's what radio does for me and what it does every single day for me. I like being taken on journeys and that's what radio does everyday.

Tony Phillips is Commissioning Editor, Arts, BBC Radio 4

The Quarryman's Daughters is broadcast on BBC Radio 4 at 11.00pm on Tuesday 5 May 2015.
Find out more about The Quarryman's Daughters on the Media Centre website.
Read Miranda Sawyer's interview with artist Katrina Palmer on the Guardian website.

15 Years of Food and Farming Awards

2015-04-28T08:32:49+00:00

Chas & Momo Bakery - baked in Thornton Heath (photo: Chareon Tapaneyasastr)

In 2011 I went with my fellow judge, chef Richard Corrigan, to the Loch Arthur creamery in Dumfries and Galloway. We knew their cheeses were good because we’d tasted two of them in London, in the process of making up our short list of three finalists for best food producer in the Food and Farming Awards. We also knew that the dairy - supplied with milk from their own farm - was part of a Camphill community, a place where people with varying disabilities live as part of regular families in group homes. But what we didn’t know astounded us. In the cheese-making room, after we’d donned our white coats, we saw that almost all the makers of Farmhouse, Killywhan and Crannog were people with the kind of physical and mental difficulties that would have kept them out of most commercial workplaces. In the maturing room it was the same. Yet what they were turning out in the most professional, skilled and knowledgeable way were some of the UK’s greatest cheeses. Richard was so thrilled he bought 5 kilos of them to take back to his restaurant.

Loch Arthur won that year’s producer award and now you can buy their cheeses in delis and specialist shops all over the UK , as well as by mail-order A great story about a business (and it is a business, not a charitable enterprise). People making great food that’s also making a difference to a lot of lives and boosting the local economy - as well as showing that to be severely “handicapped” is not to be useless. In a world that sometimes seems addicted to the quick buck at any cost, the Loch Arthur story says that making a buck more slowly, while caring decently for the animals which supply the raw ingredients and the people who provide the labour and skill, brings widespread benefits, as well as seriously delicious - and nutritious - food.

We’ve always told stories on The Food Programme - some of them about power misused, of short-sightedness, cruelty, greed and ignorance. But what gives us heart for the tough stories are the other kind, like Loch Arthur’s - accounts of people who’ve swum against the tide in the food business. Those who stood up for high standards in farming and food production at a time when the smart money seemed to be all on the side of “efficiency” and cheapness - whatever the long-term environmental and social costs. In 2015 it’s easy to see the price we’re paying every day for those smart money values - from the dramatic decline in many bird species through soil erosion to the obesity epidemic and its inevitable travelling companion type 2 diabetes, the disease that threatens to bankrupt the NHS.

In 1999 - 20 years after the first broadcast of The Food Programme - we decided that we needed to highlight those stories in a way that wasn’t possible on the programme. We wanted to find out from our listeners who the food heroes were in their neighbourhoods. Not just people preserving standards, but those setting new standards, reviving old skills or developing new skills as bakers, meat curers, butchers, shopkeepers, chefs… in fact, anyone, any organisation, that through food was making life in Britain better. We particularly wanted to know about those refusnik cooks in schools, hospitals, care homes and other public catering places who’d declined to go along with the highly processed, factory-made foods that back then were being pressed on them in the name of sacred cheapness and because “that’s what people want”.

Paul serving on Veasey's Fish Stall (photo: Guy Milnes)

For the first awards in 2000 - royally launched by Prince Charles at St James’s Palace - listeners responded with hundreds of nominations. This year we had thousands. And this year as I made my way through more than 1200 nominations for the food producer category alone, I realised that we now have a living, joined-up food culture in Britain. It’s still patchy, but there’s a network of thousands of people in the quality food business who support each other, sharing their skills and knowledge. They also get together to market and sell their goods. They can do that because good food is what an increasingly large number of people want. There’s an eager market out there - even in these tough economic times.

All that good news isn’t just to the credit of the food awards - we aren’t that powerful – but for 15 years Radio 4 listeners have engaged with our search, working as our judges’ eyes and ears to map the changes in Britain’s food landscape. And every year about 12 of those judges - scientists, chefs, public health doctors, food writers and editors, broadcasters, policy experts, caterers - have given days of their time to read the nominations, meet to taste, discuss and draw up short lists and then, finally, travel all over the country. From the Scillies to the Orkneys, to NI’s six counties and the Welsh coast, they have to meet the three finalists in each category, looking over their businesses and asking the questions that can’t be answered at a distance.

Back in the mid-80s, when I first heard it, I wanted to work at The Food Programme because, as a food journalist, I was interested in what it was about and it seemed to embody those Reithian- BBC values - educating, informing, entertaining - that had mattered a lot to me growing up in a working class household in Lancashire. It was one of the BBC’s best. I think - I hope - the food awards over the last 15 years have added to that reputation.

Sheila Dillon is presenter of The Food Programme on BBC Radio 4