Art Of Living

Title

First
Broadcast

Repeated

Comments

A Cape Sound Story

20190611

20190615 (R4)

Music and dance are so tied together; it is hard to imagine how a profoundly deaf dancer can become an International star in the contemporary dance world, but South African Andile Vellem has done it. Vellum lost his hearing at the age of five, but that hasn't stopped him from dancing, or becoming the artistic director of one of South Africa's leading integrated dance Companies - Unmute.

To find out how, Nathaniel Mann, a British singer and musician, travels to the beautiful and troubled city of Cape Town for a close encounter with the talented dancer, as he embarks on a new production - Trapped Man - in which he and another dancer are bound tightly together, struggling for release.

The plan is to perform the dance out in the street but it's a risky business. Adrienne Sichel, South African dance critic, recalls how a previous site specific dance attracted violence - a truck driven at dancers by an enraged white driver.

Andile grew up in a house full of dance. His parents were famous ballroom dancers - one of the few professional dance genres open to non-whites - and as a small child he remembers his sister holding his hand to a speaker so he could feel the vibrations created by the music. As he grew older, inspired first by Michael Jackson, and later by the rich musical history of the Cape, he learned to sense music through vibration - creating his own style of dance, including sign dance.

Now with his life partner, Mpotseng Shuping, he travels the world, performing at international festivals, and it was in Berlin that he first met UK singer and musician Nathaniel Mann. Mann follows two parallel stories; what it is to move to music which you can't hear, and how Vellum has interpreted a century of South African music, from the colonial era, through apartheid, and out the other side, through dance.

As a musical legacy, it's complex and politically weighty, but it is these sounds that Andile Vellem asked UK composers, Dom Coyote and Nathaniel Mann, and musicologist Noel Lobley, to work with as a sound track for one of this productions.

We hear his feelings about this music, his personal journey, and the recordings themselves - a powerful way in to the history of recorded South African music.

Producer: Sara Jane Hall

With thanks to Unmute Dance Company members -

Siphenathi Mayekiso

Themba Mbuli

Nadine McKenzie

and Siemon Allen archivist - Flat International

All Alone - Irving Berlin - Piano Roll 9676

Marching on Pretoria - Ian Calquhoun - 1901

Wa Q'Um Udalimede - Reuben Caluza's Double Quartet 1930

Zulu Piano Medley - Thomas Mabilesta 1948

African Market Abdullah Ibrahim -1988

Slow-Moving (Trapped Man) · Orson Hentschel 2016

Giant speakers vibrating through the floor transport Andile Vellem into a world of dance.

Breath Is Life: Eileen Kramer

20190604

20190608 (R4)

'You don't start a dance by letting breath out, you do it by taking breath in... it's coming to life.'

Eileen Kramer first fell in love with a dance in 1939 - watching the members of Gertrud Bodenwieser's company waltz to the Blue Danube in Sydney in a whirl of feeling and expression. She tracked down the Austrian dance pioneer within days, auditioned, and later joined her group - one of the first modern dance companies in Australia.

The new dance... wishes to embrace all the human feelings, not only harmony, lightness and charm but also passionate desire, immense fervour, lust, domination, fear and frustration, dissonance and uproar. The new dance does not content itself with being enchanting and entertaining only; it wishes to be stirring, exciting and thought-provoking' - Gertrud Bodenwieser.

In this documentary, we hear how Eileen has carried this expression of feeling into her second century. Still working as a dancer and choreographer at 104, Eileen returned to her hometown of Sydney in the hopes of hearing a kookaburra. Across the decades, she has lived and danced in America, India and Europe, learned the twist from Louis Armstrong, written books, made films, fallen in love and most recently entered a self-portrait into the Archibald Prize, one of Australia's biggest art competitions.

'You have all this in you and then somebody comes along and shows you how to express it in dance... it's a wonderful thing.'

Photo credit: Sue Healey

Additional recordings by Catherine Freyne and Fiona Croall

Workshop recorded at the Dance and the Child International conference in Adelaide (2018)

Produced by Eleanor McDowall

A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4

The 104-year-old choreographer Eileen Kramer takes us on a vivid dance through her life.

Drawing In The Dark

20181203

20190523 (R4)

Close your eyes, take a breath, and join artist Stephanie Smith as she invites you to draw in the dark.

An artist based in Sunderland, Stephanie has spent the past eight years developing a new artistic process, which she's called 'skin-mapping'.

Her participants close their eyes and put charcoal to canvas, to really feel the tactile sensations in their faces & bodies. Stephanie guides artists and beginners alike through her practice.

These paintings, these scratchings onto thick paper, are interlaced with the stories, backgrounds and memories of the contributors; following the speed, the rhythm, the stresses and compresses on the canvas.

Featuring the voices of Olivia Glover, Mariam Khattab, Stephen Banks, Rafal Marzec, Anna Debska, Laura Hind and Barrie West.

Producer: Jay Sykes

A Soundscape Production for BBC Radio 4

Close your eyes, take a breath. Artist Stephanie Smith invites you to draw in the dark.

Elvis, A Tribute In Dance

20181204

20190527 (R4)

Claire Cunningham is a Scottish choreographer and contemporary dancer who performs with crutches. We join her in the studio during the research period for a new work, Thank You Very Much, which draws on Claire's current fascination with Elvis Tribute Artists.

Claire is intrigued by the difference between impersonation and tribute, what it means to train to become someone else - or an ideal of someone else - and relating this to the lived experience of disability. She asks, `Is this also a life of being pressured to be someone you are not?`

The programme is a fun, exuberant and occasionally poignant mix of dance, music, singing, text and, of course, fabulous costumes.

Claire is a hugely respected artist who tours all over the world in both disabled and non-disabled arts festivals. For this new work, she has brought together an ensemble of professional performers who all identify as disabled - Dan Daw, Marissa Perel, Tanja Erhart and Victoria Malin - and they are all involved in the creation of the piece, which has been commissioned by Manchester International Festival and National Theatre of Scotland for 2019.

Through one-on-one masterclasses with Elvis Tribute Artists, practising harmonies, and offering up their own personal experiences of physiotherapy and speech therapy, the group not only learn to sing and dance like Elvis Presley, but also explore how paying tribute involves bringing something of themselves into the act. These tasks become part of improvisations in the studio, from which the final show will be devised.

As a choreographer, Claire is interested not so much in traditional dance techniques but in individual languages of bodies, particularly disabled bodies. For her, the lived experience of disability is inherently creative due to the ways it requires you to rethink how to move through the world.

Produced by Victoria Ferran

A Just Radio production for BBC Radio 4

We join choreographer Claire Cunningham as she creates a new work for disabled dancers.

Frank Ormsby's Parkinson's

20171126

20171202 (R4)

When the poet Frank Ormsby was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease, his response was unexpected. He embarked on a newly fertile creative period, documenting his experiences and finding a voice in his poetry that he was beginning to lose in his daily communications.

His first act was to search Google - for jokes. 'Which would you rather have, Parkinson's or Alzheimer's. Obviously Parkinson's! I'd rather spill half my pint than forget where I left it.

As he discusses with Marie-Louise Muir, the illness has changed him. It's mellowed him. After a career as a school teacher, his daily life is now quieter and more solitary. There's a poetry, almost, in his pauses and silences.

Frank belongs to the generation of Northern Irish writers that has followed in the footsteps of Seamus Heaney and Michael Longley, His medication, he believes, has aided his creativity. But it has also induced hallucinations. He finds himself sitting on his own in his study but surrounded by people, by the ghosts of his mother-in-law and unidentified visitors. And he's also haunted by a fear that the earth will open up and swallow him.

But if you ask how he's doing, he writes,

I'll tell you the one

about 'parking zones disease'.

I'll assure you that the pills seem to be working'.

Photo credit: Malachi O'Doherty

With readings by Frank himself and Ciaran McMenamin from The Darkness of Snow.

Produced by Alan Hall

A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4.

Marie-Louise Muir traces poet Frank Ormsby's creative response to illness.

From The Heart

20181125

20190102 (R4)

How can art and science work together to help patients with heart disease better understand their illness and treatment? The artist, Sofie Layton and bioengineer, Giovanni Biglino worked with patients at Great Ormond Street to look inside themselves and reflect on the uniqueness of their bodies to discover the stories they carry inside their hearts. The heart holds a unique place in our bodies and lives so we meet Tahera, mother of Arif, one the patients who took part in this journey of discovery and an exploration of both his medical heart and poetic heart.

Producer Sarah Addezio

How can art and science work together to help patients with heart disease?

In My Mind's Eye

20181218

20181222 (R4)

Following two artists as they work with parents and children in Pembrokeshire to bring autism and the arts together.

Daniel Settatree and Catherine Dyson have given disposable cameras to a group of young people affected by autism and asked them to take pictures of things that interest them. For these children, talking about their emotions, about their feelings and about the things which fascinate them is very difficult. The camera is a way in which these artists can unlock the humanity and creative potential of this very particular group.

Will it work? How will the participants react? And what can we learn from their pictures?

Produced by Glyn Tansley for BBC Wales

Photograph by Kes Warner

Two Welsh artists try to better understand autism with an imaginative new project

Knife Imitates Art - How Surgeons Use Creativity

20190613

20190903 (R4)

Peter Curran presents a fascinating study of surgeons working in Belfast and Bristol who demonstrate the benefits of their work as musicians, songwriters and sculptors, and what that brings to the Operating Theatre.

Each offer a contrasting take on what music means to their lives; improving empathy, technique or just total immersion in a creative place that balances the life and death issues and responsibilities they face in their professional world.

In Belfast, the link between good surgeons and creativity is illustrated by the international prize-winning surgeon and Clinical Teaching Fellow at Queen's University, Ian Walsh.

Consultant surgeons Aidan Armstrong, Stephen White and Robert Cuthbert talk about the contrasting emotions of performing surgery and playing classical music concerts.

We visit the Bristol studio of Lisa Sacks, a South African plastic and reconstructive surgeon whose clinical career began in Soweto - but from the age of 13 she's been making sculptures of heads, bodies and hands. Her bronze portrait bust of Averil Mansfield, Britain's first female Professor of Surgery is currently on display at the Royal College of Surgeons in London.

Produced by Peter Curran. A Foghorn production for BBC Radio 4

Top surgeons reveal parallel lives as sculptors and musicians.

Listening Without Ears

20171212

20171216 (R4)

How do people with hearing loss engage with music? Performer Eloise Garland challenges assumptions.

Eloise began to lose her own hearing fifteen years ago. Now aged 23, she's a professional singer, violinist and teacher - and reveals her very personal engagement with sound.

She considers different ways of teaching and appreciating music - some of which might surprise people who aren't deaf - and shares her deep emotional connection to an art form and cultural activity that is so strongly associated with hearing.

Eloise also meets Tarek Atoui, a composer and sound artist who brings together deaf and hearing people to make music with special instruments designed to expand the experience of sound beyond the aural. If music cannot be heard, what are the other ways of listening?

Producer: Steve Urquhart

A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 4

(Image credit: Caroline Lessire).

How do people with hearing loss engage with music? Eloise Garland tackles assumptions.

Lucy Jones, Painter

20181210

20190909 (R4)

Tom Shakespeare visits the artist Lucy Jones at her home in Ludlow to talk about painting, freedom and flowers.

Lucy Jones may well be the best British painter you've never heard of. She was born with cerebral palsy, but she has no intention of identifying as a disabled artist. She is a simply an artist, and a very good one at that. Over the past forty years she has produced a large and distinctive body of work - landscapes, portraits and self-portraits in bold colours on large canvasses.

For this programme Lucy drives Tom out to visit one of the locations, on the border between England and Wales, which she returns to again and again to inspire her landscapes. They then visit her rural studio, to see a work in progress and finally regroup months later at Lucy's gallery in London.

Lucy is preparing for an upcoming exhibition and Tom Shakespeare has been asked to write about her for the exhibition catalogue. And so, as we progress from kitchen to field to studio and on to the gallery, Tom is making notes, building up his own portrait - of Lucy Jones, painter.

Producer Martin Williams.

Lucy Jones has a career retrospective exhibition at the Attenborough Centre in Leicester until October 6th 2019.

Tom Shakespeare on artist Lucy Jones.

Only Happiness

20181211

20190413 (R4)

The minds of those with Williams Syndrome are made of sound. They're more likely to possess absolute pitch and the way they perceive the world can be found in music - they can be moved to tears by a cello or disturbed by minor chords. This rare, genetic condition affects between 1 in 7,500 and 1 in 20,000 people in the UK. But music and sound unite.

In rural County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, an outdoor activity centre becomes the annual home to the Williams Syndrome Association of Ireland. For one week a year, music can be heard across the campsite. Cracked windows and doors left ajar reveal beating drums and pop hits, and nursery rhymes are played at the piano. Laughter and chatter can be heard at every corner.

MOBO award-winning saxophonist YolanDa Brown steps inside the world of Williams Syndrome as she joins the campers, saxophone in hand. In meeting those with Williams Syndrome, she discovers how they hear music in unexpected places, be it a coffee machine producing a C note or a bell with a high frequency. The emotional response it creates is heightened, with anxiety and empathy threaded together in discordant harmony.

Producer: Kate Holland

A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4.

YolanDa Brown discovers the world of Williams Syndrome, where sound is the central emotion

Songwriting With Soldiers

20171112

Trevor Dann reports from the USA on an innovative scheme which helps military veterans suffering with post traumatic stress by pairing them with songwriters.

Former soldiers discuss the therapeutic effects of creating songs about their experiences. The founder of the programme, singer-songwriter Darden Smith, explains how the idea came from his song, Angel Flight, about the pilots who bring home the bodies of deceased servicemen and women. And we hear country artist Maia Sharp working on a song with John who lost the use of his arm in a combat incident which is still classified.

A Trevor Dann Company production for BBC Radio 4.

Pairing American military veterans suffering from PTSD with songwriters.

When Words Fail, Music Speaks

20171205

20180211 (R4)

Producer Peter Curran and Blanche Girouard, who teaches in a mainstream school, capture an extraordinary musical collaboration between school pupils with complex educational needs and professional musicians, as they create and perform an original show together.

William Carslake and Patrick Stockbridge have successful careers composing and playing with orchestras and choirs. Another side of their life is bringing musical composition, stage performance and having a good time exploring instruments to young people who have special educational needs around the UK. The work they create together then becomes part of performance festivals and events alongside mainstream schools.

In this programme, they develop a musical about food, the senses, and being lost in the jungle. It's a noisy, funny and inspirational process. They have just 48 hours to write the show from scratch, before a performance in front of the whole school. We hear the thoughts and reactions of pupils and composers as they put their shoulders to the task.

The programme also offers a powerful illustration of the skills and effort by dedicated teachers and carers at the school in Telford, as they shape classes and creative experiences around the changing, often complex needs of each young person in their care.

A Foghorn Company production for BBC Radio 4.

Pupils with disabilities and complex educational needs work with professional composers.

Episodes

Title	First Broadcast	Repeated	Comments
A Cape Sound Story	20190611	20190615 (R4)	Music and dance are so tied together; it is hard to imagine how a profoundly deaf dancer can become an International star in the contemporary dance world, but South African Andile Vellem has done it. Vellum lost his hearing at the age of five, but that hasn't stopped him from dancing, or becoming the artistic director of one of South Africa's leading integrated dance Companies - Unmute. To find out how, Nathaniel Mann, a British singer and musician, travels to the beautiful and troubled city of Cape Town for a close encounter with the talented dancer, as he embarks on a new production - Trapped Man - in which he and another dancer are bound tightly together, struggling for release. The plan is to perform the dance out in the street but it's a risky business. Adrienne Sichel, South African dance critic, recalls how a previous site specific dance attracted violence - a truck driven at dancers by an enraged white driver. Andile grew up in a house full of dance. His parents were famous ballroom dancers - one of the few professional dance genres open to non-whites - and as a small child he remembers his sister holding his hand to a speaker so he could feel the vibrations created by the music. As he grew older, inspired first by Michael Jackson, and later by the rich musical history of the Cape, he learned to sense music through vibration - creating his own style of dance, including sign dance. Now with his life partner, Mpotseng Shuping, he travels the world, performing at international festivals, and it was in Berlin that he first met UK singer and musician Nathaniel Mann. Mann follows two parallel stories; what it is to move to music which you can't hear, and how Vellum has interpreted a century of South African music, from the colonial era, through apartheid, and out the other side, through dance. As a musical legacy, it's complex and politically weighty, but it is these sounds that Andile Vellem asked UK composers, Dom Coyote and Nathaniel Mann, and musicologist Noel Lobley, to work with as a sound track for one of this productions. We hear his feelings about this music, his personal journey, and the recordings themselves - a powerful way in to the history of recorded South African music. Producer: Sara Jane Hall With thanks to Unmute Dance Company members - Siphenathi Mayekiso Themba Mbuli Nadine McKenzie and Siemon Allen archivist - Flat International All Alone - Irving Berlin - Piano Roll 9676 Marching on Pretoria - Ian Calquhoun - 1901 Wa Q'Um Udalimede - Reuben Caluza's Double Quartet 1930 Zulu Piano Medley - Thomas Mabilesta 1948 African Market Abdullah Ibrahim -1988 Slow-Moving (Trapped Man) · Orson Hentschel 2016 Giant speakers vibrating through the floor transport Andile Vellem into a world of dance.
Breath Is Life: Eileen Kramer	20190604	20190608 (R4)	'You don't start a dance by letting breath out, you do it by taking breath in... it's coming to life.' Eileen Kramer first fell in love with a dance in 1939 - watching the members of Gertrud Bodenwieser's company waltz to the Blue Danube in Sydney in a whirl of feeling and expression. She tracked down the Austrian dance pioneer within days, auditioned, and later joined her group - one of the first modern dance companies in Australia. The new dance... wishes to embrace all the human feelings, not only harmony, lightness and charm but also passionate desire, immense fervour, lust, domination, fear and frustration, dissonance and uproar. The new dance does not content itself with being enchanting and entertaining only; it wishes to be stirring, exciting and thought-provoking' - Gertrud Bodenwieser. In this documentary, we hear how Eileen has carried this expression of feeling into her second century. Still working as a dancer and choreographer at 104, Eileen returned to her hometown of Sydney in the hopes of hearing a kookaburra. Across the decades, she has lived and danced in America, India and Europe, learned the twist from Louis Armstrong, written books, made films, fallen in love and most recently entered a self-portrait into the Archibald Prize, one of Australia's biggest art competitions. 'You have all this in you and then somebody comes along and shows you how to express it in dance... it's a wonderful thing.' Photo credit: Sue Healey Additional recordings by Catherine Freyne and Fiona Croall Workshop recorded at the Dance and the Child International conference in Adelaide (2018) Produced by Eleanor McDowall A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4 The 104-year-old choreographer Eileen Kramer takes us on a vivid dance through her life.
Drawing In The Dark	20181203	20190523 (R4)	Close your eyes, take a breath, and join artist Stephanie Smith as she invites you to draw in the dark. An artist based in Sunderland, Stephanie has spent the past eight years developing a new artistic process, which she's called 'skin-mapping'. Her participants close their eyes and put charcoal to canvas, to really feel the tactile sensations in their faces & bodies. Stephanie guides artists and beginners alike through her practice. These paintings, these scratchings onto thick paper, are interlaced with the stories, backgrounds and memories of the contributors; following the speed, the rhythm, the stresses and compresses on the canvas. Featuring the voices of Olivia Glover, Mariam Khattab, Stephen Banks, Rafal Marzec, Anna Debska, Laura Hind and Barrie West. Producer: Jay Sykes A Soundscape Production for BBC Radio 4 Close your eyes, take a breath. Artist Stephanie Smith invites you to draw in the dark.
Elvis, A Tribute In Dance	20181204	20190527 (R4)	Claire Cunningham is a Scottish choreographer and contemporary dancer who performs with crutches. We join her in the studio during the research period for a new work, Thank You Very Much, which draws on Claire's current fascination with Elvis Tribute Artists. Claire is intrigued by the difference between impersonation and tribute, what it means to train to become someone else - or an ideal of someone else - and relating this to the lived experience of disability. She asks, `Is this also a life of being pressured to be someone you are not?` The programme is a fun, exuberant and occasionally poignant mix of dance, music, singing, text and, of course, fabulous costumes. Claire is a hugely respected artist who tours all over the world in both disabled and non-disabled arts festivals. For this new work, she has brought together an ensemble of professional performers who all identify as disabled - Dan Daw, Marissa Perel, Tanja Erhart and Victoria Malin - and they are all involved in the creation of the piece, which has been commissioned by Manchester International Festival and National Theatre of Scotland for 2019. Through one-on-one masterclasses with Elvis Tribute Artists, practising harmonies, and offering up their own personal experiences of physiotherapy and speech therapy, the group not only learn to sing and dance like Elvis Presley, but also explore how paying tribute involves bringing something of themselves into the act. These tasks become part of improvisations in the studio, from which the final show will be devised. As a choreographer, Claire is interested not so much in traditional dance techniques but in individual languages of bodies, particularly disabled bodies. For her, the lived experience of disability is inherently creative due to the ways it requires you to rethink how to move through the world. Produced by Victoria Ferran A Just Radio production for BBC Radio 4 We join choreographer Claire Cunningham as she creates a new work for disabled dancers.
Frank Ormsby's Parkinson's	20171126	20171202 (R4)	When the poet Frank Ormsby was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease, his response was unexpected. He embarked on a newly fertile creative period, documenting his experiences and finding a voice in his poetry that he was beginning to lose in his daily communications. His first act was to search Google - for jokes. 'Which would you rather have, Parkinson's or Alzheimer's. Obviously Parkinson's! I'd rather spill half my pint than forget where I left it. As he discusses with Marie-Louise Muir, the illness has changed him. It's mellowed him. After a career as a school teacher, his daily life is now quieter and more solitary. There's a poetry, almost, in his pauses and silences. Frank belongs to the generation of Northern Irish writers that has followed in the footsteps of Seamus Heaney and Michael Longley, His medication, he believes, has aided his creativity. But it has also induced hallucinations. He finds himself sitting on his own in his study but surrounded by people, by the ghosts of his mother-in-law and unidentified visitors. And he's also haunted by a fear that the earth will open up and swallow him. But if you ask how he's doing, he writes, I'll tell you the one about 'parking zones disease'. I'll assure you that the pills seem to be working'. Photo credit: Malachi O'Doherty With readings by Frank himself and Ciaran McMenamin from The Darkness of Snow. Produced by Alan Hall A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4. Marie-Louise Muir traces poet Frank Ormsby's creative response to illness.
From The Heart	20181125	20190102 (R4)	How can art and science work together to help patients with heart disease better understand their illness and treatment? The artist, Sofie Layton and bioengineer, Giovanni Biglino worked with patients at Great Ormond Street to look inside themselves and reflect on the uniqueness of their bodies to discover the stories they carry inside their hearts. The heart holds a unique place in our bodies and lives so we meet Tahera, mother of Arif, one the patients who took part in this journey of discovery and an exploration of both his medical heart and poetic heart. Producer Sarah Addezio How can art and science work together to help patients with heart disease?
In My Mind's Eye	20181218	20181222 (R4)	Following two artists as they work with parents and children in Pembrokeshire to bring autism and the arts together. Daniel Settatree and Catherine Dyson have given disposable cameras to a group of young people affected by autism and asked them to take pictures of things that interest them. For these children, talking about their emotions, about their feelings and about the things which fascinate them is very difficult. The camera is a way in which these artists can unlock the humanity and creative potential of this very particular group. Will it work? How will the participants react? And what can we learn from their pictures? Produced by Glyn Tansley for BBC Wales Photograph by Kes Warner Two Welsh artists try to better understand autism with an imaginative new project
Knife Imitates Art - How Surgeons Use Creativity	20190613	20190903 (R4)	Peter Curran presents a fascinating study of surgeons working in Belfast and Bristol who demonstrate the benefits of their work as musicians, songwriters and sculptors, and what that brings to the Operating Theatre. Each offer a contrasting take on what music means to their lives; improving empathy, technique or just total immersion in a creative place that balances the life and death issues and responsibilities they face in their professional world. In Belfast, the link between good surgeons and creativity is illustrated by the international prize-winning surgeon and Clinical Teaching Fellow at Queen's University, Ian Walsh. Consultant surgeons Aidan Armstrong, Stephen White and Robert Cuthbert talk about the contrasting emotions of performing surgery and playing classical music concerts. We visit the Bristol studio of Lisa Sacks, a South African plastic and reconstructive surgeon whose clinical career began in Soweto - but from the age of 13 she's been making sculptures of heads, bodies and hands. Her bronze portrait bust of Averil Mansfield, Britain's first female Professor of Surgery is currently on display at the Royal College of Surgeons in London. Produced by Peter Curran. A Foghorn production for BBC Radio 4 Top surgeons reveal parallel lives as sculptors and musicians.
Listening Without Ears	20171212	20171216 (R4)	How do people with hearing loss engage with music? Performer Eloise Garland challenges assumptions. Eloise began to lose her own hearing fifteen years ago. Now aged 23, she's a professional singer, violinist and teacher - and reveals her very personal engagement with sound. She considers different ways of teaching and appreciating music - some of which might surprise people who aren't deaf - and shares her deep emotional connection to an art form and cultural activity that is so strongly associated with hearing. Eloise also meets Tarek Atoui, a composer and sound artist who brings together deaf and hearing people to make music with special instruments designed to expand the experience of sound beyond the aural. If music cannot be heard, what are the other ways of listening? Producer: Steve Urquhart A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 4 (Image credit: Caroline Lessire). How do people with hearing loss engage with music? Eloise Garland tackles assumptions.
Lucy Jones, Painter	20181210	20190909 (R4)	Tom Shakespeare visits the artist Lucy Jones at her home in Ludlow to talk about painting, freedom and flowers. Lucy Jones may well be the best British painter you've never heard of. She was born with cerebral palsy, but she has no intention of identifying as a disabled artist. She is a simply an artist, and a very good one at that. Over the past forty years she has produced a large and distinctive body of work - landscapes, portraits and self-portraits in bold colours on large canvasses. For this programme Lucy drives Tom out to visit one of the locations, on the border between England and Wales, which she returns to again and again to inspire her landscapes. They then visit her rural studio, to see a work in progress and finally regroup months later at Lucy's gallery in London. Lucy is preparing for an upcoming exhibition and Tom Shakespeare has been asked to write about her for the exhibition catalogue. And so, as we progress from kitchen to field to studio and on to the gallery, Tom is making notes, building up his own portrait - of Lucy Jones, painter. Producer Martin Williams. Lucy Jones has a career retrospective exhibition at the Attenborough Centre in Leicester until October 6th 2019. Tom Shakespeare on artist Lucy Jones.
Only Happiness	20181211	20190413 (R4)	The minds of those with Williams Syndrome are made of sound. They're more likely to possess absolute pitch and the way they perceive the world can be found in music - they can be moved to tears by a cello or disturbed by minor chords. This rare, genetic condition affects between 1 in 7,500 and 1 in 20,000 people in the UK. But music and sound unite. In rural County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, an outdoor activity centre becomes the annual home to the Williams Syndrome Association of Ireland. For one week a year, music can be heard across the campsite. Cracked windows and doors left ajar reveal beating drums and pop hits, and nursery rhymes are played at the piano. Laughter and chatter can be heard at every corner. MOBO award-winning saxophonist YolanDa Brown steps inside the world of Williams Syndrome as she joins the campers, saxophone in hand. In meeting those with Williams Syndrome, she discovers how they hear music in unexpected places, be it a coffee machine producing a C note or a bell with a high frequency. The emotional response it creates is heightened, with anxiety and empathy threaded together in discordant harmony. Producer: Kate Holland A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4. YolanDa Brown discovers the world of Williams Syndrome, where sound is the central emotion
Songwriting With Soldiers	20171112		Trevor Dann reports from the USA on an innovative scheme which helps military veterans suffering with post traumatic stress by pairing them with songwriters. Former soldiers discuss the therapeutic effects of creating songs about their experiences. The founder of the programme, singer-songwriter Darden Smith, explains how the idea came from his song, Angel Flight, about the pilots who bring home the bodies of deceased servicemen and women. And we hear country artist Maia Sharp working on a song with John who lost the use of his arm in a combat incident which is still classified. A Trevor Dann Company production for BBC Radio 4. Pairing American military veterans suffering from PTSD with songwriters.
When Words Fail, Music Speaks	20171205	20180211 (R4)	Producer Peter Curran and Blanche Girouard, who teaches in a mainstream school, capture an extraordinary musical collaboration between school pupils with complex educational needs and professional musicians, as they create and perform an original show together. William Carslake and Patrick Stockbridge have successful careers composing and playing with orchestras and choirs. Another side of their life is bringing musical composition, stage performance and having a good time exploring instruments to young people who have special educational needs around the UK. The work they create together then becomes part of performance festivals and events alongside mainstream schools. In this programme, they develop a musical about food, the senses, and being lost in the jungle. It's a noisy, funny and inspirational process. They have just 48 hours to write the show from scratch, before a performance in front of the whole school. We hear the thoughts and reactions of pupils and composers as they put their shoulders to the task. The programme also offers a powerful illustration of the skills and effort by dedicated teachers and carers at the school in Telford, as they shape classes and creative experiences around the changing, often complex needs of each young person in their care. A Foghorn Company production for BBC Radio 4. Pupils with disabilities and complex educational needs work with professional composers.