Touch Special

Available for over a year

When did someone last touch you? Maybe they kissed you goodbye this morning or someone touched you on the arm on the bus because you’d dropped something. The Touch Test explores touch in its many forms and launches a major piece of research in which we want as many people as possible to take part. In the studio we have Professor Michael Banissey and Dr Natalie Bowling, both from Goldsmiths University of London, who have been commissioned by the Wellcome Collection in London to conduct this research in collaboration with the BBC. Professor Roger Kneebone and lace maker Fleur Oakes explain how medical students can learn to touch, and Claudia visits Dr Sarah Wilkes at the Institute of Making and encounters some extraordinary tactile materials. Our reporter Chhavi Sachdev has been to visit a project in the city of Mumbai where blind women are using their sense of touch to examine women for breast lumps. Presenter: Claudia Hammond Producer: Paula McGrath