Audience profile
Predominantly Radio 4 listeners, however this project is scheduled to have a wider spread in Phase 2.

Context synopsis
The Listening Project, in partnership with BBC Nations & Regions, the British Library and others. We were to encourage and enable members of the audience to get together with significant people in their lives to record in audio “the conversation of a lifetime”.

This could be about key moments in a relationship, an interview about a significant experience (e.g. going to war, an illness, going bankrupt, writing a book) etc.
As these sound bytes are unique unmeditated examples of oral and social history the British Library was to also archive these as an ongoing audio record of contemporary life. The BBC have also been broadcasting parts of these conversations across local and network services and online, to enrich the way we tell the story of the way we live.

The objective for the network is to grow The Listening Project as a long running element of Radio 4’s offer it is thought that it could grow to be a 10 year project. The project was to be developed leveraging existing technology provided by the BBC Introducing application.

How we did it (methods/technologies)
We built the site using Zend PHP, JavaScript, CSS and XML in such a way as to be able to ‘bolt’ in the BBC’s media services for the dynamic content. The services we included on the site included video, podcast, audio, listen live radio shows, Twitter commenting, image viewers and rated by most viewed and voted on content.
The site was designed using the new BBC GEL visual guidelines.