主播大秀

Youth panel for radio
Within the Year Of Beliefs the 主播大秀 plans to discuss religion and beliefs in a way that feels relevant to younger audiences - more personal, relevant to their daily lives and reflecting the changing nature of what people believe in. In addition to programming on our youth-focused networks, there will be youth takeovers of well-established programmes across radio. To inform this, a Youth Panel will be established made up of people from a wide range of different beliefs in their 20s and 30s, mainly from outside the 主播大秀. This group will also work with the 主播大秀 on a summit that explores beliefs and issues relevant to younger audiences.

Podcasts
On 主播大秀 Sounds, the Beyond Today podcast  will explore religion and beliefs across a series of episodes, including issues from the survey, part of Year of Beliefs. As people in Britain becomes less affiliated to traditional religions, it will explore how we make decisions about our lives and where we turn to for guidance on how to live them. Radio 1’s Life Hacks will explore issues which emerge from What Britain Believes, hearing from young listeners about the topics that affect their lives and the moral and ethical choices around them.

主播大秀 Radio 1 and 1Xtra

Radio 1 Life Hacks
Katie Thistleton, Cel Spellman (pictured) and guests will explore some of the issues which emerge from the survey, part of Year of Beliefs, hearing from young listeners about their moral or ethical choices around topics that affect their lives such as sex, relationships, gambling or disability.

TX: ongoing throughout 2019

Growing Up IVF
There are now over five million young people worldwide who were conceived through IVF. This documentary for 主播大秀 Radio 1 explores what life can be like growing up in the UK as one of those people. Listeners will hear from Jonathan, who managed to track down his biological mum; and from 21 year-old George, who feels betrayed after recently discovering his dad isn’t his biological dad. A young woman also reveals she feels let down by a clause in the system that means she can’t trace her biological father.

• TX: Spring 2019

1Xtra Stories: Single Muslim Female
1Xtra Stories meets Nimz, a single, black, Muslim woman on a mission to find love. This documentary follows her as she creates a profile on Muslim dating app ‘Mus-Match’ and attempts to find out more about online dating. Later, her dad tries to set her up with a man over email. Listeners hear Nimz talk to her mum about how dating has changed in the Muslim community, and chat to her male friend Ozzy about the Muslim man’s approach to dating. Nimz also reveals how being a sickle cell carrier can be a big factor in how she chooses a date.

• TX: February 2019
• A Grape production for 主播大秀 Radio 1Xtra

Asian Network

Asian Network’s Big Debate and Mobeen Azhar’s late evening show will look into the beliefs of young British Asians and how those differ from their parents’ and grandparents’ beliefs. They’ll also explore whether, with interfaith relationships on the rise, the next generation are likely to grow up with a blend of faiths.

• TX: April, August, November 2019

Radio 2

Faith in the World Week
Each year Radio 2’s Faith in the World Week explores a theme which touches on belief, spirituality and asks the big questions of life. The special programming delivers personal stories, shared experiences and world views from across all the faith traditions and multiple communities.

Faith In The World starts on Good Morning Sunday with Reverend Kate Bottley and Jason Mohammad which includes guests, discussions and music to explore the theme. There is also a one-hour documentary during the week, plus special content in the daily Pause For Thought features and on the The Jeremy Vine Show. Local Radio stations across the country will also feature the theme and contribute stories to their digital platforms. This year the theme is Being Single.

When Ariana Grande announced that she was going to stay single in 2019 and “probably my life”, her comments echoed the views of many young people in Britain. In fact, 25 percent of people aged 16 and over are single and are choosing to be single in increasing numbers. During Faith In The World Week, Radio 2 will explore the theme of what it means to be single and how faith communities engage with young people who are increasingly turning their backs on religious ideas of marriage.

However being single is not confined to just the young: how do people in mid-life and later years adjust to being single after a divorce or death of a partner? Do they find it a place of loneliness or do they identify with Stevie Nicks, who said: “I feel very alone. I feel very sparkly and excited about everything.”

Pause For Thought
The 主播大秀’s Year Of Beliefs will be marked by Radio 2’s popular Pause For Thought as part of Vanessa Feltz’s early morning programme and the Zoe Ball Breakfast Show. Pause For Thought will be responding to the Year Of Beliefs agenda with specially themed content from regular contributors and special guest presenters.

Radio 3

Al-Andalus
主播大秀 Radio 3 will be presenting a new series exploring the culture and music of Al-Andalus - medieval Muslim-run Spain. The station will revisit the mix of Arab, Jewish and Christian art created during this period.

• TX details: tbc

The Essay - Behold The Man
The events of Holy Week and Easter are among the most ubiquitous motifs in Western art. London’s National Gallery alone features nearly 60 versions of the crucifixion in its catalogue, alongside art works depicting associated scenes of the Last Supper, the betrayal of Judas and more than 35 of the risen Christ.

Such images are rife with religious symbolism and meaning. Even among those who self-identify as Christian, however, the skill to interpret those symbols can be argued to be rapidly disappearing. For those who do not identify as Christian, the path to understanding the symbolism within these paintings is harder still to decipher, meaning that these works are often interpreted without the influence of any preconceptions or prescribed ideas about the symbolism they contain.

This series of The Essay, created in partnership with The National Gallery, will see five individuals who are either non-believers or members of other faiths select an image depicting the final week of Christ’s early life from the National Gallery’s collection. They then reflect on what they see, their responses, memories and associations.

The five essayists are:
Sathnam Sangera - on Christ Crowned With Thorns, from the workshop of Dirk Bouts.
Kit de Waal - on Christ Before Pilate, by the Master of Cappenberg (Jan Baegert)
Abdul-Rehman Malik - on Man Of Sorrows, by Jacobello del Bonomo
Chibundu Onuzo - on The Incredulity Of Saint Thomas, by Guernico
Sheila Hayman (artwork TBC)

• TX details: 15-19 April 2019
• Producer: Kristine Pommert

Slow Radio - Durham Cathedral
Set in Durham Cathedral, this programme takes listeners on a meditative journey through the daily rituals of this 12th century Norman monument.

Listeners will experience the resonant acoustic of this remarkable building, quieter moments of reflection, the bells of the Central Tower which have been in place for over 300 years, the sounds of the cathedral choir and the 19th century organ - an aural meditation on the traditions of Cathedral life.

• TX details: tbc
• Producer: Nick Holmes

主播大秀 Radio 4

Youth Takeovers
Building on the contributions made by sixth formers to Radio 4’s landmark series Morality In The 21st Century presented by Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks (pictured), Radio 4’s religious output will invite young people to have their say at greater length in special Youth Takeover editions of certain programmes.

Fatwa
The hidden story of the 1989 fatwa issued by Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini against Salman Rushdie, focussing not on the writer’s ordeal but on the forces that led to the fatwa and the consequences of it for all of us. The series covers a 20-year period from 1979 to 1999, exploring race relations in Britain, identity, free speech and the connection between the 1989 fatwa and contemporary violent jihad.

• TX: 4-15 February, 1.45pm-2pm
• Producer: Chloe Hadjimatheou for 主播大秀 Radio 4

Me And My Fatwa
The story of the birth of a fatwa. The programme follows Amjid Ali, whose life was transformed when he received a kidney – but he had to wait 23 years to get it, because there’s a lack of Muslim donors. There’s confusion within Muslim communities over whether organ donation is allowed in Islam and Amjid is determined to get a clear fatwa, or religious ruling, on the issue.

• TX: 4 February 2019, 8pm to 8.30pm
• Producer: Jo Dwyer for 主播大秀 Radio 4

From Sensuality To Puritanism
Though there have been periods of religious oppression, and women were never equal to men, most Muslims throughout history lived full and free lives from the 9th century to the 1960s. An Andalusian Muslim physician Abulcasis, for example, invented lipstick during the Islamic Golden Age. Cross-cultural exchanges led to extraordinary creativities, artistic freedoms and broadmindedness. Muslim civilizations, offering abundant and assorted pleasures, lured and kept outsiders. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries westerners sought out sexual and artistic freedom in Arabia and India, such as E.M Forster, who had an Indian lover - and later an Egyptian lover too.

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown takes us back to this colourful Islamic past to understand today’s climate, which seems to be a total reversal. Most Muslim nations and communities have become more conservative, repressed and repressive. Yasmin explores this shift and seeks to explain what might have brought about this transition.

• TX: 27 February & 6 March 2019, 11am-11.30am
• Producer: Mohini Patel for 主播大秀 Radio 4

The Psalms
Jeremy Irons reads some of the most beautiful poetry in the Bible, found in the Book of Psalms, over Easter 2019. These songs offer a space for reflection and contemplation, addressing a wide range of subjects from love to politics, history to faith.

• TX: 16 & 17 April, 3.30pm-4pm; 21 & 22 April, 4.30pm-5pm
• Producer: Susan Roberts for 主播大秀 Radio 4

David Cannadine: Crossing The Religious Divide
David  unpicks some of the myths and received wisdom about peoples that history tells us were separated or in conflict because of religion. He discovers that history is more nuanced: that conflict has more complicated and sometimes has completely different roots. Whether the subject is Pagan versus Christian, Muslim versus Christian, or Catholic versus Protestant, the notion of peoples being irreconcilably polarised by religion can be simplistic and often incorrect. Tolerance and co-operation have a history all their own.

• TX: July 2019
• Producer: Susan Marling for Just Radio

Science And Religion
Presented by writer Nick Spencer, this three-part series challenges popular assumptions about the relationship between science and religion through history, replacing a simplistic narrative of 'warfare' with one of complexity, characters and colour. Spanning several continents and many centuries, it tells stories that are unknown and corrects those that are badly known, to offer new context and greater understanding of this complex relationship.

• TX: July 2019
• Producer: Dan Tierney for 主播大秀 Radio 4

Troubles Shared
Two of the most respected journalists associated with the Northern Ireland conflict - Peter Taylor and Fergal Keane - go on a road trip around the country together and talk about their personal experience of reporting from the frontline of the conflict, the impact it had on their lives and what it all means to them now.

• TX: August 2019
• Producer: Conor Garrett for 主播大秀 Radio 4

A Believer’s Guide To Atheism
Michael Symmons Roberts assesses the ongoing relationship between belief and non-belief. In A Believer’s Guide To Atheism, Symmons Roberts, who was an atheist until his early 20s and is now a Catholic, argues that atheism can offer a useful critique of religion, one that encourages those of faith to examine their own thinking.

• TX: September 2019
• Producer: Geoff Bird for 主播大秀 Radio 4

Sunday Worship
In the Year of Beliefs, Sunday Worship will mark pivotal moments in our national life taking place in 2019. On Sunday 2 June Sunday Worship will mark the 75th anniversary of World War Two’s D-Day, live from Portsmouth Cathedral, the city which served as the headquarters and main departure point for the military and naval units destined for Sword Beach on the Normandy coast.

Then on Sunday 3 November the programme visits Berlin to mark the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The service will celebrate the changes in the spiritual life of Christians in the city and how political and spiritual freedom work hand in hand.

• Producer: Philip Billson for 主播大秀 Radio 4

5 Live

主播大秀 Radio 5 Live’s Year Of Beliefs programming will support the main TV and radio highlights in the 主播大秀’s Year Of Beliefs, as well as canvassing opinion on what the nation believes via the station’s flagship phone-ins: Your Call and Stephen Nolan.

6 Music

On 主播大秀 Radio 6 Music’s Now Playing show (Sunday, 6pm-8pm) presenter Tom Robinson will be curating listeners’ music choices on the theme of Songs That Made Me Believe In... and the stories behind their selections.

World Service

Heart and Soul
The World Service weekly faith-based programme which explores personal approaches to spirituality from around the world. The spin-off quarterly series Heart And Soul Gathering is recorded in front of an audience in different locations across the globe and exploring local faith issues with leading community opinion-formers. In 2019 the programme will go to Marseille, which has one of the largest populations of Muslims in Europe, for a special discussion with young people about how they see their futures.

World Service Instagram
The 主播大秀 World Service will be celebrating Year of Beliefs on , spotlighting the lives of young believers of all kinds with photos and videos from around the world. Launching in January and running throughout the year on @bbcworldservice, each month will have a different theme, beginning in January with the hashtag #mindfulmonth that will focus on mindfulness, meditation and well-being.

New reporters
As part of the 主播大秀 World Service’s Specialist Unit there will be three new reporters covering global religious stories: Delhi-based reporter Priyanka Pathak, filing stories for English and Indian Language services; a Beirut-based reporter covering stories in English and Arabic; and a third reporter expected to be in post in early 2019.

London-based senior producer Joanne Whalley will coordinate and maximise the global impact of the new reporter hires across the 主播大秀’s 42 language services.