Looking and listening

Available for over a year

Fi Glover presents friends, relatives and strangers in conversation. This week: listeners Christine and Kathy discover difficult shared memories of attending an Open Air School in the 1960's; Amelie, who works in a strip club, and Debbie who is a choreographer and lecturer, confront the different ways that their professions are perceived; and Ben and Stephanie, who both have schizophrenia, discuss the ways the illness has shaped their lives. 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. The conversations are being gathered across the UK by teams of producers from local and national radio stations who facilitate each encounter. Every conversation lasts up to an hour, and is then edited to extract the key moments of connection between the participants. Most of the unedited conversations are being archived by the British Library and used to build up a collection of voices capturing a unique portrait of the UK in this decade of the millennium. You can learn more about The Listening Project by visiting bbc.co.uk/listeningproject Producer: Ellie Bury