Learning to talk again

Some stories it’s clear what the news story is and how you want to tell it to others, sometimes you have to spend a little longer thinking about it.

The other week I was sent to a music workshop for people who’ve had strokes, it’s a new approach helping people in Lincolnshire learn how to speak again. I was introduced to the Sound Lincs group in Navenby while they were still happily singing pop songs. While one of the staff told me about some of the stories behind the people there. I came to realise that all the families had been through a lot.

One of the problems was that people were incredibly keen to share their stories but as they struggled with their speech it was hard for me to include them in my radio package. In fact I spent about an hour talking to all the people in the group and knew I was going to have to cherry pick all the best bits to get the greatest impact.

In a brief amount of time I found out how people coped with learning to speak again, from the sad moments to the everyday moments. For some it meant bringing music into their lives for the first time, and for others it was a good way to bring back something normal back into their lives that they loved before having a stroke.

I also wanted to make sure that someone explained just how people could sing 80s ballads word perfect while still stuggling to talk. It’s all quite complex, but put simply it seems another part of the brain is responsible for singing and another part is used for speech.

It was quite daunting to think that this encounter needed to be summed up to a listener in around about a minute long package. Also people had trusted me with their stories and I wanted to be able to tell them authentically. On top of that I didn’t want it to be gloomy, it is of course a serious subject but the people I’d met where optimistic.

To help make the piece more upbeat I used recordings of the group singing. I always knew I wanted to end with them singing The Proclaimers, as it’s the group’s favourite. I also used the singing as a chance to introduce some of the serious things the group members were explaining about having a stroke. Hopefully this made it both an interesting start to the package but also allowed the listener to reflect on some of the serious aspects of it too.

Basically it was a great opportunity where others were eager to tell me about what they’d been through, and I saw it as a chance to best tell even more people about this remarkable group.

Here’s the package that went out in the Lincs FM news bulletins.

[audio:http://clreid.com/portfolio/sound%20lincs%20package.mp3]