Jessie Levene

The last BBC programme I worked on before moving to Canada has finally been broadcast! It’s an episode of the long-running, award-winning Radio 4 series The Reunion, which reunites a group of people intimately involved in a moment of modern history – which in this edition is the opening of Tate Modern, Britain’s first national museum of modern art. I started researching and assembling the archive materials for this Reunion way back in 2014, so it was a real pleasure to hear some of those clips again in the finished programme. But my favourite moment came during one of the group discussions, when Tate Director Nick Serota recalled the Queen’s question to him on entering the Rothko Room for the first time: “Is this man into Zen?”

About a year ago I was thrilled to be invited to work as China Consultant at the development stage of ‘Scared Rivers’, a major 3-part BBC2 series presented by Simon Reeve. The series was eventually commissioned, and all three episodes have recently been broadcast. The Yangtze episode, with which I was most involved, can be watched here, and the whole series here.

My BBC presenting debut, ‘China in Vogue’, which profiles the rise of high-end fashion in China, is now available to download (for free!) as an MP3 here.

Ahead of the broadcast of my presenting debut for BBC World Service, there was this lovely preview in the Guardian this Saturday.

The programme profiles the rise of high-end fashion in China and is my second China-focused documentary of this year!

‘China in Vogue’ will be broadcast 5 times during the course of Tuesday 11th March, and is also available to listen to here.

It was with great pleasure that I sat down on Wednesday morning to listen to the broadcast of my first full-length documentary for BBC Radio 4, ‘Batting for the Middle Kingdom’. This was a programme very close to my heart – it took over a year to make, and included a trip back to my beloved China – and I’m hugely proud of the finished result. You can listen to the programme online here until Wednesday 27th November.

In advance of my upcoming BBC Radio 4 documentary on cricket in China, the programme’s presenter Fred Dove has written a piece for BBC Radio 4’s From Our Own Correspondent. You can hear that here (Fred’s bit starts at about 23’30”), or read the print version here. The full documentary will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Wednesday 20th November 2013 at 11am.

I researched and coordinated a recent BBC Radio 4 documentary about poetry in San Francisco, produced by the wonderful Laura Parfitt of White Pebble Media. It is a gorgeous programme, unfortunately no longer available to listen to online, but here’s the programme page anyway. Part two of the series, on the poetry of Los Angeles, can be heard here.

Four conversations that I co-edited for the BBC Radio 4 series The Listening Project are now available to listen to online.

The first, ‘Reluctant Retirement’, which was also broadcast on the Radio 4 programme, is an intimate conversation between sisters Lynn and Anna about Lynn’s recent, difficult decision to retire from her job as a primary school deputy head. It was recorded and submitted by my comrade in radio freelance-land (and Lynn’s daughter) Kirsty McQuire.

The second, ‘Life Changing Decision’, is a beautiful, emotional conversation between Janette and her daughter Helen, about the events that led to Helen entirely losing her hearing at the age of 19 months.

The third, ‘Wise Women’, is a chat between partners Sylvia and Alison and their friend Jenny, who is also a lesbian, about their thirty-year battle to have their sexuality accepted.

And in the fourth, ‘Unexpected Gift’, husband and wife Alan and Anne recall how a WWII bomb blast left Anne an unexpected gift and just how different their experiences as evacuees were.

If you’d like to record a conversation and be part of The Listening Project, please click here.