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.
My radio production showreel for 2012. A mixture of work produced for BBC Radio 4, NPR, Making Contact and also for my MA at Goldsmiths.
The latest edition of BBC Radio 4 series Short Cuts (made by the wonderful Falling Tree Productions) features a piece that I produced, about a woman who gave her daughter the surname ‘Wild’. It’s available to listen to on iPlayer until Tuesday 9th October.
With my Radio MA complete I have now entered the (slightly scary) world of freelancing.
To kick things off, in September I recorded a simul-rec with writer, journalist and all-round nice person Caitlin Moran for weekly BBC Radio 4 programme Feedback, made by Whistledown Productions. The episode that my simul-rec was used in is unfortunately no longer available to listen to online, but I was told by the programme’s Executive Producer that, and I quote, “it’s the best recorded simul-rec that I’ve heard in 20 years” !
And as if that wasn’t enough excitement for one month, I also recently produced a feature for the second series of Short Cuts, the fabulous programme of creative radio documentaries made by Falling Tree Productions for BBC Radio 4. Back in January when I was still a student I was lucky enough to have my work featured in the first series of Short Cuts; my piece for the new series is an interview with a woman who gave her daughter the surname ‘Wild’, and will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 at 3pm on Tuesday 2nd October.
Spectators at a wrestling match in Dakar, Senegal. Photograph © Jane Labous
I was recently very lucky to have the opportunity to make an audio slideshow to accompany the first episode of new BBC Radio 4 series The Global Reach.
The slideshow is available to watch online here, but unfortunately due to some technical issues the image quality is not the best it could be, so I’d suggest that it’s best viewed off full-screen mode.
The photographs and audio are courtesy of the very talented Jane Labous.
This is the 5-minute feature that I made for the Creative Radio strand of my MA programme at Goldsmiths College, University of London.
The piece features two anonymous people talking about their experience of counselling, and also includes quotations from Carl R. Rogers, the founding father of counselling, and the song ‘We Have a Map of the Piano’ by Icelandic band múm.
Extracts from this piece were featured on the BBC Radio 4 programme Short Cuts in January 2012.
Excerpts from a 5-minute feature I made last year were featured on the third instalment of new BBC Radio 4 programme Shorts Cuts today. You can listen to it on BBC iPlayer until Tuesday 31st January, and I will put up the whole feature here very soon.