Listening Project
Number of items in collection: 1191
Short description:
Recordings in this collection can be played by anyone.
Listen to conversations recorded by BBC Nations and Regions as part of The Listening Project which started in 2012.
The Listening Project is an audio archive of conversations recorded by the BBC. People are invited to share an intimate conversation with a close friend or relative, to be recorded and broadcast (in edited form) by the BBC and curated and archived in full by the British Library. These one-to-one conversations, lasting up to an hour and taking a topic of the speakers' choice, collectively form a picture of our lives and relationships today.
Oral history recordings provide valuable first-hand testimony of the past. The views and opinions expressed in oral history interviews are those of the interviewees, who describe events from their own perspective. The interviews are historical documents and their language, tone and content might in some cases reflect attitudes that could cause offence in today’s society.
Long description:
Recordings in this collection can be played by anyone.
Listen to conversations recorded by BBC Nations and Regions as part of The Listening Project which started in 2012.
The Listening Project is an audio archive of conversations recorded by the BBC. People are invited to share an intimate conversation with a close friend or relative, to be recorded and broadcast (in edited form) by the BBC and curated and archived in full by the British Library. These one-to-one conversations, lasting up to an hour and taking a topic of the speakers' choice, collectively form a picture of our lives and relationships today.
Oral history recordings provide valuable first-hand testimony of the past. The views and opinions expressed in oral history interviews are those of the interviewees, who describe events from their own perspective. The interviews are historical documents and their language, tone and content might in some cases reflect attitudes that could cause offence in today’s society.
The project was launched in March 2012 and is a partnership between the British Library, BBC Radio 4, BBC local and national radio stations. The collection is growing as the project continues to move around the country and is taken up by different local radio stations. The conversations are recorded by BBC producers but the participants are free to talk about what they want and to direct the conversation themselves. Many of the conversations are accompanied by a photograph of the participants.
The Listening Project was inspired by StoryCorps, an initiative set up in the United States with the mission 'to provide Americans of all backgrounds and beliefs with the opportunity to record, share, and preserve the stories of our lives'. Between 2003 and 2012 StoryCorps recorded more than 35,000 conversations between two people who know each other (normally couples, relatives or close friends) across the country, some broadcast on National Public Radio and all archived at the Library of Congress.