The Listening Project

Fi Glover presents four conversations between friends and strangers around the country.

This week: Friends and neighbours Saira and Samantha reflect on the uncomfortable boundary between personal and public grief; Sara and Gillian share their experience of struggling to keep high street businesses afloat; Nicola and Lola exchange stories on the different kinds of prejudice they faced in the health system during pregnancy; and Eurovision super-fans Matt and Chris make a case for their respective home cities, Birmingham and Manchester, to host the contest next year.

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