20/05/2012

Available for over a year

Fi Glover presents the Sunday edition of Radio 4's series capturing the nation in conversation: in today's programme, we meet Ray and his half-sister Joan; their conversation about the father they shared but Ray never knew was recorded by Radio Merseyside. And from Radio Lincolnshire, a conversation between two brothers who have farmed the same piece of land south of Skegness for more than 60 years. While Radio Humberside brings us Jill and Michael, brought together by the loss of a husband and a brother in the 1968 triple trawler disaster in Hull. And we meet David Reeves, the producer who recorded two of the conversations. The Listening Project is a new initiative for Radio 4 that aims to offer 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 being gathered across the UK 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. Many of the long conversations are being archived by the British Library which they will use to build up a collection of voices capturing a unique portrait of the UK in the second decade of the millennium. You can upload your own conversations or just learn more about The Listening Project by visiting bbc.co.uk/listeningproject Producer Marya Burgess.