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The Listening Project

Discussion & Talk

Factual: Life Stories

Capturing the nation in conversation, in partnership with the British Library.

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The Listening Project: Life's End: Jean and Rebecca

06/04/2012

Life's End: Jean and Rebecca

BBC Radio 4 - The Listening Project, Life's End: Jean and Rebecca

A mother and her daughter share a moment of tenderness and pain together.

Fi Glover introduces a brief encounter between a mother and her daughter who share a moment of tenderness and pain together.

In Radio 4's new series, mounted in conjunction with the British Library, Fi Glover introduces the first of a series of encounters capturing the nation in conversation. Mother Jean talks intimately with her daughter Rebecca about the difficulties of ageing and failing health and how best to make your peace with the world.

The Listening Project is a new initiative for Radio 4 that aims to offer a sort of 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. Listeners are given a unique opportunity to eavesdrop on these moments of closeness that capture the essence both of a special relationship and of something that really matters to them both. 

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, while Radio 4 is broadcasting three of these jewel-like moments each Friday, with an omnibus on Sundays at 2.45pm. You can upload your own conversations or just learn more about The Listening Project by visiting bbc.co.uk/listeningproject 

There is an omnibus edition of the Listening Project on Sunday at 2.45pm.

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