When Talking Matters Most

Available for over a year

Fi Glover presents a new and extended weekly edition of the programme with voices past and present on the shared experience of being in lockdown. A police trainer in South Wales talks to a sergeant in the Response Unit in Cheshire for the first time about front line policing; Fi catches up with hairdressing sisters in Cambridgeshire about the place of hairdressers in the new world order; and listens in on a chat between Scarborough-based café owners who have come together to form a community kitchen project while in lockdown to provide meals to local people in need; and an older father and teenage daughter living in separate households, have a chat in a way they might not have done before. 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: Mohini Patel