17/06/2012

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 former Olympic athlete Mark, who remembers his experiences in Moscow and Los Angeles for his daughter Sophie, and civil partners, Nick and Philip from Scotland, who reflect on how attitudes to homosexuality have changed. Jonny Robinson explains how the British Library is saving such conversations for posterity. 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:.