16/08/2020

Available for over a year

Fi Glover presents the extended weekly edition of the programme on the shared experience of being in lockdown and beyond. In this edition a couple discuss their anxieties and expectations of a lockdown wedding just days before the event; two dads who have never met exchange stories of what life was like for them when their new-born babies were in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Gloucester Royal Hospital during the pandemic; two women talk about the challenges of running a business during the pandemic; and two teenagers studying the same GCSE subjects talk through their anxieties as they await results coming out this week. 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