In the Field

In the Field focused on communicating the findings of research and development projects. The project leader asked her colleagues at the NRI to volunteer their projects as topics for programmes. The idea was that the researchers themselves, where possible, would carry out the interviews themselves with villagers and local researchers in their project sites. This approach reflected the tenor of the programme: local people telling their own stories and talking about their feelings about the particular problem they had faced and how they had tackled it.

To act as reporters, NRI researchers needed practical training in using the radio production equipment and in face-to-face interviewing skills. The BBC contributed the former type of expertise and NRI contributed the latter. Training was intended to bring together the two types of skills in order to produce programmes that are 'radiophonic' and that allow 'windows' to be opened into other people's lives and livelihoods, generating empathy and understanding. Organisers held 2 one-day training sessions for 12 NRI staff members working on projects to be featured in the series. The trainees were issued tape recorders and professional standard microphones for their visits, during which they carried out interviews with villagers and local collaborators and gathered some local sound effects, as well as photographs.

The recorded material was brought back to the UK, where BBC staff edited it and compiled excerpts. Draft scripts, including interview excerpts, were passed to NRI staff working on the projects, who sent them out to local collaborators and the project funder. Once approved, the programmes were recorded, incorporating any necessary changes. The programmes included excerpts from the interviews, local music, and sound effects, held together by a script read by a presenter. Where voice-overs in English were necessary, organisers used people from the countries concerned, so as not to distance them from the interviewees. The organisers also interviewed the researchers and included excerpts from these interviews in the programme, so that the researchers became 'characters' in the story, too. Organisers worked closely with the NRI researchers, and through them their local research partners, to ensure that they, and local informants, were happy with what went into the programmes. This process was in response to researchers' sense that that in the past when they had been in touch with the media, whether print or broadcast, their work had often been misrepresented.

Topics covered in the 12 programmes are wide-ranging, both geographically and in terms of subject matter, from training "barefoot vets" to treat village animals in Indonesia to trading cocoa fairly in Ecuador. Click here to go to the Livelihoods Connect page for In the Field, where you will find scripts for the programmes as well as the audio.

To support the radio series, which was broadcast for the third time on the BBC World Service in October 2002, organisers produced a booklet with the aim of consolidating what was in the programmes and raising related issues. A popular science journalist worked with the project leader on the booklet in an attempt to make the text for the booklet accessible. The booklet was sent out by the BBC free of charge to listeners, who were prompted to write in. Organisers attempted to make the booklet as engaging as possible, with photographs of many of the villagers featured in the programmes and of the villages they live in, as well as maps showing the location of villages. There are also 2 double page spreads looking at cross-cutting issues related to tackling livelihood problems. Click here for more information on this booklet, and how to obtain it. In addition to producing the booklet, organisers presented the text, photographs, and maps in downloadable form on In the Field page on the NRI site. Click here to listen to the audio of the programmes.

These 'In the Field' materials have been piloted for the past 18 months in UK schools and in more than 50 educational institutions around the world for use in training extension workers and in degree courses. In addition to the printed booklet, organisers wanted to make it possible for pilot institutions to use the radio programmes themselves in teaching. Because it is not always easy for institutions, particularly in the South, to play the programmes available on the website in a classroom, organisers produced cassettes containing the radio programmes and sent them free of charge to educational institutions involved in piloting.

Economic Development, Agriculture.

Organisers hope that the follow-up to the series (rebroadcasting in local languages and development of appropriate educational material) will foster the delivery of information to more people at village level, and (they hope) inspire local action.